Hear me out. Life at home with your kids is what you make of it. Some days are exciting and busy, while others are chill and boring. Both are ok. Both will happen no matter what. But what if all of your days were working towards a purpose almost effortlessly? Everything might not go to plan, but most of what can happen in a day can lead kids toward the common goal of loving and enjoying life while learning about it.
I’m here to tell you that a curriculum is not your enemy or your ball and chain.
It truly should be a helpful tool to guide you through your days and be there for you when times get crazy.
So what is a curriculum?
It’s a guide!
A curriculum should be an easy-to-read list of ideas with one main topic. As you go through your days together, you remember this topic. As it comes up in your daily lives, you will see “teachable moments” popping up everywhere. These are moments where you can pause and talk or observe more about what your child is seeing. It directs you to point things out for your child to notice.
Discussions will arise, and your child will learn everything from you and what they are experiencing for themselves at that moment.
It’s truly a beautiful thing. It’s the reason why I created a curriculum for parents. In my years working with kiddos, I would always see these moments! They made me feel warm and hopeful, but they also made me want to take note to share them with the parents. Sometimes the parents would start with a positive reaction but may end with the feeling of “oh man, I missed another one.” Now you won’t have to!
It’s a plan!
As you plan your days out (ahead of time or five minutes before leaving the house), you can remember, “oh. Our learning center and curriculum topic this month is airplanes. We can go to…” fill in the blank with a park that has an airplane structure, a museum where you can see the planes, park near an airport to watch the planes take off and land. Not only are you filling your days, but you are filling them with purpose.
You can consciously decide to provide your child with a meaningful, experiential learning moment.
You can plan to meet other families here to experience this together. Library visits can include picking out plane books. You can fill your learning center with wheels and plane figurines, maybe packing a suitcase. The very young can have several flashcards of different kinds of airplanes or parts of an airplane they can look at. Maybe your older one would like to take out their Magna-Tiles and make a runaway for their toy jet. Having a plan will make your life easier and your child’s life richer with learning experiences everywhere they turn.
It’s a safety net!
Those crazy days do come. Plans may change for a mountain of reasons. Using your guide and the plans laid out for you in the curriculum, you are always ready to pull out an activity for them to work on to keep their hands busy and their minds learning. It doesn’t matter if they’ve seen and used the activity a million times. To them, that means they can do it on their own. So make sure you throw those activities in a bag on your way out, so you are always ready for something that comes along- an emergency grocery store run, doctor visit, family visit, or a long drive in the car.
Knowing that you already have that plan and a guide for support means you will never need to worry about what will happen next.
Maybe you’re overwhelmed with the decision to keep your kids home instead of putting them in daycare. Perhaps you feel alone and lost. Having a solid curriculum takes the guesswork out of your days. You will always know what to do and what to look for and get the chance to be involved in your child’s education. A curriculum will make you feel proud for standing up for your family and for deciding to do preschool together. Enjoy the teachable moments. Enjoy not missing a single moment of your baby’s childhood.