A Mom and More

We parents are our kids’ first teachers and their permanent learning partners, mentors and coaches. How can we enrich our kids’ school experiences and help them learn better? Just like me, most moms have their own careers and many have not been trained in child psychology, teaching and learning techniques. Also, a lot of moms lack time and energy to teach their kids after a long day’s work. Thus, we hire tutors to pitch in. We may afford tutors but we still feel guilty for not personally teaching our kids.

So, to have time and energy for them, at 37, I retired at the peak of my career as corporate planner. Not every mom can take the plunge I took thirteen years ago (and I won’t advice anyone to do as I did either). But, all moms can teach their kids at mom’s own pace and time and with little extra cost. By being creative and sensitive to our kids’ interests and seizing moments with our kids just about anywhere, we can give them a richer learning experience which no school in the world can match.

Here are some activities I tried with my own kids to serve as idea generators to get you started with your own activities. (If I had earlier thought these would pass for “education” efforts on my part, maybe I’d still be employed till now. But, no regrets – I’ve happily been with my kids through times they’ve needed me most.)

1. Fill your home with books and magazines to open windows to reading and a love for books.

Even if your child can’t read or is too young to understand a written page, pictures in books can serve as talking points for teaching him/her about things, people, places and events.

2. Introduce you child to the daily/weekly newspaper or to a monthly magazine.

Begin with a section which will spark curiosity or attention. You may start with the comic page, the local/world news, food, entertainment, sports or a section written by young writers. Tell your child about a photo which catches his interest or ask him what he thinks the photo is trying to portray or ask him to check the weather forecast. My kids regularly checked for what and where family movies were shown.

3. Share the fun, discovery and satisfaction of planting, tending or fixing something together.

If you enjoy gardening, plant potted herbs and cactuses, care for flowers or grow vegetables. You may borrow or buy a book on plant care and read it together. Through gardening, children learn patience as they wait and see a seed become a sprout then a bigger plant with a flower or fruit; how sunlight, water and soil interplay to keep a plant healthy; and may be more willing to try veggies which he helped raise.

A father and son wash-the-car together weekends can teach a son how to dust the car interiors, remove mud on the tires, control water flow from a hose or apply car polish properly (even if it may mean having dad redoing the job in the beginning.)

4. Go outdoors together in the beach, farm, forest or park.

Having visual-auditory kids, I found the outdoors to be a wonderful classroom. At our family beach outings, my kids could spend early morning till the sun sets just digging with their plastic shovels, forming various shapes with their sand molds and building sand castles to their own delight (without minding the sunburn that they do mind now). For toddlers, aside from developing their grip, sand play also gives them a semblance of control (to build their confidence and self-esteem). For older children, building sand castles tickle their imagination and help them get a feel of engineering concerns as building foundations, materials and structures. For a teener, have him cup sand with his hand and observe what happens to the sand when he grips it tightly and loosely; this can be a concrete example of teaching a teener how to handle friendships and relationships (too tightly or too loosely would be bad).

When visiting relatives in the province, pass by a farm and make your child ride a carabao or a horse or bring him to a poultry (where he can see how eggs are made to hatch into chicks). Or when in the highway, show your kids how rice is grown so they wouldn’t be as naïve as my 2-year old son who candidly remarked as we passed by the Pampanga rice fields “Wow! Mommy ang ganda, ang taas at ang green ng grass nila dito.” (… how beautiful, tall and green the grass is here.)

Hike in a nearby forest or a nature park. Have your child identify different plants and trees by their leaves, stems, bark and flowers. Hiking forest trails and mountain paths would give our kids a better understanding of some landforms they learn in school. During the hike, kids could collect different kinds of leaves, press, paste and label for use in a scrapbook or a bookmark.

Enjoy the stars on a clear night. You only need a blanket to lie on with your kid. You can do this in your garden or at the park and teach your child or ask him to identify the star constellations he can see.

Go camping. Reminisce your girl/boy scout days and tell stories about your younger day. Have a bonfire and cook dinner over the fire with kids doing their own barbecues. Sleep as a family in a tent and enjoy simple pleasures of outdoor living while teaching them about how people used to live before the birth of electricity, water systems, toilets, microwaves and telephones.

5. Join your child in cyberspace and learn together.

Play games with your child, direct him to online educational sites or ask him to make greeting cards sor family and friends on special occasions. (In my case as a techno-newbie, my kids have to teach me so I can catch up with what they’re doing on the web.)

6. Visit exhibits and museums together.

Check-out free or reduced-prices for students. Have kids try interactive exhibits, attend an art appreciation workshop, and get free leaflets about where they’ve been to and seen with you.

7. Involve your kids in home crafts which you also enjoy.

Crafts boost a child’s creativity. For younger kids, you may buy craft books or magazines and ask them to read, gather materials, follow directions and complete their craft project with your help. My daughter saw me doing Christmas decors for sale when she was in pre-school and tried to design her own décor. Subsequently and as time passed by, she was making her own greeting cards, give-aways, trinkets and toys. She now writes a do-it yourself column in a girl’s magazine “Jam” and designs art projects, part-time, as a pleasant break from school routines.

8. Bring your children to the grocery, mall and bookstore to learn math and budgeting.

Give your child a spending budget for personal and school needs. You’d be amazed how a child who says he hates math, performs poorly in math or has math phobia could find practical items to perfectly fit his budget.

9. Encourage your child to imagine, dream and play “make believe”.

Ask him to sit down, relax, close his eyes and fantasize what he wants to do, to have or to become someday. This enables him to learn visualization in a fun way and as a student, condition him to perform well in school to get what he wants.

10. Use puzzles, card, trivia, memory and educational board games to teach your kids.

Puzzles exercise our kids’ minds, promotes logical thinking, pattern recognition and language development. Card, trivia, and memory games can help our kids master math, science, reading and history and expand their vocabulary as they get entertained along the way. Online games may also be used as learning tools but these should be played with parental supervision, under time limits and only for kid safe sites.

11. Encourage your child to doodle.

Doodling expresses through symbols what is in our child’s unconscious minds. They can doodle anytime, anywhere: while waiting for the school bus, in the car, on long trips or while sitting in any passive environment. Doodling unleashes a child’s creativity and also gives us clues to some of their day-to-day emotional conflicts or unexpressed feelings (which we can help try to solve).

12. Create humor in your child’s life.

Be spontaneous in using humor when your kid goes through or has to deal with a mental, emotional or physical problem. Just like magic, humor allows our kids to see hope and the lighter side of life; thus helping them successfully cope with difficulties they may face as kids and when they become adults. We can cultivate their sense of humor by asking them to share funny stories in school (when in a traffic jam), to make up their own “Knock-knock! Who’s there?” or enjoy comic books

Try these tips and see how teaching your child could be effective, meaningful and fun for everyone. Fashion your own exercises, design your own classroom setting and squeeze out your creative juices. Yes, moms can be teachers without really getting an education degree and getting trained to teach – we just need smart moves and lots of love. In Albert Einstein’s words “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.”

Yes, mom, you can enrich your child’s learning and be the best teacher your child can have in his/her lifetime!