About 3 months ago I started looking online for lists of subjects that parents could teach their two-year-old. I got lucky and came across an entire 26-week teaching curriculum! And it was free!
Since finding this website, Seth and I have added a daily "Learning Time" to our morning routine.
The gist of it:
Mondays-- theme introduced; corresponding book(s) read, song(s) sung; these revisited each day
Tuesdays-- shape or color
Wednesdays-- letter
Thursdays-- number
Fridays-- nursery rhyme and fine-motor activity to celebrate week's theme
She suggests keeping a poster of what you do each week. When the weeks done, we've been taping each part up in the stairwell to our basement. It's awesome to see the ground we've covered. It's also a great visual reminder of the fun we've had together.
I love the structure and her ideas. Her ideas also spark my creativity. It usually ends feeling liked structured play time together.
Some of my favorite things we've done so far:
- learning shapes with play-doh (also love her idea of using cookie dough and baking it, need to try it)
- keeping track of numbers in his sticker counting book
- watercoloring drawn eyes for theme celebration
- scavenger hunts of letters, colors and numbers throughout the house
- playing letter games on starfall.com
- him loving songs on youtube that follow the theme: "lighthouse song" (Brazzle Dazzle Day), "rainbow song" ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow"), "cat song" ("The Cat Came Back" by Laurie Berkner)
- "tape the eyes on the face" version of "pin tale on the donkey".
- listening and dancing to "jungle songs": Saint Saens' "Carnival of the Animals"
- building our own lighthouse with Duplo blocks
- reading new books together I might not have checked out otherwise
(said lighthouse)
It's also rewarding to be driving down the freeway and he suddenly identifies "letter E!" on the side of the trailer truck. Or to be in the grocery store and have him point out that the box full of oranges is an octagon. And it's rewarding, not just because he's actually retaining something, but because it wasn't Caillou or Sesame Street that taught it to him: it's something he learned from me.
So consensus: fun, educational. Recommended.
P.S. She has lesson plans for older kids and several other subjects on the same website that I haven't looked into myself, but I'd bet are good.
