Having read many of your interesting posts on homeschooling, I take what you say (about that) very seriously. I have seen that you indeed have a lot of wisdom on this subject and you make many thought-provoking comments that seem to contain a great deal of truth.
The reason I am responding so late is that your last post did have a big impact on my thinking.
While it is OK to introduce children to certain academic materials (in a playful way), if they don’t take an interest in it, it is best to wait. These young years are better spent in loosely supervised unstructured **play**.
I can see a lot of signs that my son is ready to learn to read and interested in doing so. And he was ready last year to do the math problems he will have in school this year. The thing that worries me about the public school is that he will get turned off by the institution aspect, the structure, which indeed is effected at the expense of play.
I was going to respond to various other parts of your last post, but rather than bothering you with that, I would like like to ask you just one question:
What do you think of TV?
Please remember that being bored is **good**! Being bored is an uncomfortable state for a child and it prompts him to play, be creative with and art projects, practice and instrument, read, build things, dig holes,..etc.
I am a health professional and until my homeschoolers were about 7, 6, and 5, I had a small office that occupied the first floor of our home.
One day when the children were about 5, 4, and 3 I was in my office with one my patients who just happened to be a Mormon missionary. My children were upstairs fighting bitterly over a video game that had been given to them by their grandfather. After I finished with my appointment I said the two young men, “Boys, could you give me a hand?”
The three of us marched upstairs. I unplugged the TV, and to the children's amazement, the two young men carried the TV up to the attic.
The plan was to leave the TV up in the attic for a month to help teach the children that there were **consequences** to making a ruckus while Mom had office hours. However, not having a TV made such a difference in the peace, tranquility, and spirituality of our home that we never hooked up the TV again. Yes, we did use it as a monitor, and during the Olympics we had a fuzzy picture with rabbit ears, but we never again had TV. My husband and I are now grandparents and we still don't have a TV, even for ourselves.
One night a week we watched a video movie that the children had to **earn** by meeting family and homeschooling goals. I did allow them to watch educational videos such as “Nova” anytime they wanted. Our evenings were spent reading with the children individually, working on art projects ( we were volunteers for the library) and playing games as a family.
Sorry for the somewhat scrambled post, but I was in a hurry to get out of the house this morning.