Anytime is learning time.

Anyone who has read our site knows I am a huge fan of personal responsibility and parents having the right to educate their children as they see fit. One way that can be accomplished is having a one income household. A none to popular stance I have is, why have children if you are getting leave the raising of your children in someone elses hands. I never understand people having babies and than putting them into day care when they are six weeks old.

One of the great things about being a stay at home Mom is that anytime is learning time. A while back on the way to the recreation center Anastasia said that she knows that the Sun is made of plasma and gas. She then went on to ask, What is plasma? I explained that it was made up of elements, I further explained that everything is made up from elements. I touched on the periodic chart and explained that she would learn more about that when she was older. This is not what she would learn in preschool.



One day while driving my mother commented about birds on a wire. Anastasia's (a four year old) responded, " Actually Mom, that is a flock of birds."

Today, while doing some research I ran across the following; By the spring of kindergarten, children should be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet "quickly and effortlessly," and understand the letter-sound relationship at the beginning and end of words. By the spring of first grade, most children should be recognizing words by sight and comprehending words in the context of simple sentences." This was published at the National Institute for Literacy website.

Anastasia has been able to identify her letters since 18 months, identify the phonetic sound associated with the letter at two years, identify the beginning and ending sounds of words since age two and read at age three. Now at age four she has no problems reading such stories to herself as Rumpelstiltskin, Twas the Night before Christmas, and Pinocchio. She is currently reading at least at the second grade level. The other day she picked up the Eagle Times and was able to read the front page story.

Anastasia loves learning she often does it on her own, Anastasia thinks learning time is play time. I don't want her quest for knowledge to be destroyed by public schools. When Jim was at a meeting at Newport he explained how Anastasia his four year old daughter can read. A teacher replied, "A four year old cannot read." It is no wonder that Newport schools still haven't figured out what to do since failing to achieve adequately yearly progress for a sixth year in a row.

Cathy




Cathy