Teaching Skills with 3+ ?

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argentwarrior

New member
Hi all, I'm wondering how you teach your children skills and provide the interactions and feedback they need to develop optimally, especially if you have children close in age (e.g., having 3 at age 5 or under). When you have one child, you can focus on so many skills - uninterrupted reading together, focusing on manipulatives that are age-appropriate, doing think-alouds of drawings and jigsaw puzzles, drawing together, etc. When you have two, providing such intensive attention to either child is harder - the older one doesn't let the younger one focus on reading or one task, the younger one makes it harder to play with things that are dangerous for younger ones (e.g., crayons, stickers, puzzles).

When you have 3 or more young ones, how do you do it all??? Or what is your parenting philosophy that helps you in thinking about this kind of question?
 
@argentwarrior I guess I don’t think intensive for one child is better. When my kids are with me we don’t intensively study but real life do. Like yesterday I took my 6-year old to the store and he read the price tags and estimated costs. That’s a great math skill, no intensive teaching necessary. They each help me cook, we read at bedtime, etc. I think it’s a cultural thing to think more focused teaching is better but I personally don’t think it is. I have 4 kids under 7 and everyone has met all developmental milestones early and my ones in preschool and kindergarten are thriving there despite never doing “lessons” with me.
 
@argentwarrior I had 3 under 3 including a set of twins. If youngest is napping, focus on the more involved stuff with the older ones. If the eldest is happy to sit beside you doing some drawing or independent reading while you focus on the younger ones, cool.

It doesn’t have to be structured either. You can turn most daily activities into learning activities. There are always opportunities to count, getting them involved in your day to day routine like cooking, cleaning and gardening works on motor skills, you can make up rhymes together as you’re working. Listening to reading in those early years is more important for their language skills later on than labouring over learning letters, so story time can be altogether, with a book aimed at one age tonight, and a different age tomorrow.

Their first year of school is going to be play based learning, so you don’t need to feel pressure to have a full structured learning course for each kid before they hit school age.
 
@argentwarrior I am in that exact situation. My kids are 5.5, 4, and 2. I have definitely noticed the problem with focused targeted learning, but I don't have a good solution yet. I also homeschool, so it's a struggle. They all like books, so when my oldest is practicing reading, the others will sit and listen to his (painfully slow) reading. When the oldest has math, I give the others manipulatives too. I have the 5 and 4 take turns doing the math lesson with appropriate differentiation (if the lesson is adding practice into the teens, the 5yo does that and the 4yo adds up to 10, etc). We do art as a group with me running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
 
@ernestservant Things to line up to practice counting. I use all sorts of little things to keep them interested, novelty definitely helps! Right now we're counting using Easter themed mini erasers. I also use beads, small blocks, small cars, mini dinos, mini animals, buttons, etc.
 
@shahrukh I’ve considered sacrificing a room as an arts and crafts room. I went to public school and the art room was always a room as tiled as it could be and completely covered in splatter of all kind.

But alas we rent 😔
 
@argentwarrior 4 kids in 5 years here. We don’t do it all, but I firmly believe the benefits of a lot of siblings close in age outweighs the lack of one on one time to focus on those things. For reading, we all go to library story time together, we all sit and read a story together at bedtime, and now my oldest (6) reads to the youngest (18 mo). Once my kids age out of nap time we use that time to work on things we can’t do when younger siblings are awake (legos, paint, puzzles, board games,etc). We are privileged enough to be able to send our kids to 2-day a week preschool and that’s where they get the majority of their scissor and glue work.
 
@argentwarrior I make appointments for each of my kids-

I make a regular appointment for each child by myself to consider their behaviors and development and think of their individual needs and goals, and how best to support them and I take notes and research what I need to learn. Then I talk to my husband about it and usually he takes on some aspect of parenting like researching a different method for shoe tying or helping a kid stay on top of brushing their hair or whatever it is.

Then I make regular appointments with each child to work on those goals. Some kids can be combined, others need separate time. So if I have two kids that are learning not to be rough with the cat, those two kids now get to tag along just mom and me for a few weeks whenever I feed cat and give cat water and wash their bowls and brush the cat and especially play with the cat, and they learn a little more about being a good pet owner and how to interact nicely.
 
@argentwarrior As ours get older we've noticed that they obtain skills from one another just as much as from us. Ours are 8, 4, and 1. It does beginner harder and less realistic as you add more kids, but they'll still get plenty of interaction if they've got involved parents.
 
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