Homeschooling before school age

Should you? And how should you?

Several months ago I was in touch with a reader, and we agreed that a post about how to homeschool before school age (5 ish) would be interesting. I’ve kept thinking about it but haven’t found the right way to write about it.

The problem is, many of us home educate because we don’t think that 5 years old is the right time to begin Educating our children, with a capital E. We see how children learn ‘in the wild’, and we don’t want to put them in a classroom, with a timetable, and a curriculum. I certainly don’t want to suggest that there is very much that anyone ought to be doing with their young child. Those precious early years are not a time to be ticking boxes.

But sometimes I see parents in facebook groups asking what they should be doing with their young children, and the answer that often comes back is: nothing. In many ways I agree. On balance, I’d rather a parent did nothing with their young child, educationally-speaking, than that they fretted about reaching developmental milestones and educational targets on schedule.

But there is lots we can do with and for our young children, including leaving them in peace to develop at their own pace. We don’t have to choose between cuddles and counting. We can do both. And if a parent asks, it seems wrong not to give them the information they’re seeking.

So here is my own, tentative, answer to the question of how we should begin to educate very young children. The first few items are not explicitly educational, and the final three focus on reading, writing, and maths. But at this age, I don’t think there is any real distinction between any of these things.

To some, what follows will seem entirely instinctive. That’s as it should be. But for many of us there is huge pressure to ‘get it right’, from Day 1, and the pressure gets in the way of the instinct. I’ve just looked up baby classes near me: on Thursdays alone there are 52 classes nearby, for children aged 0-6 months. Although there’s nothing wrong with any of these classes, I’ll go out on a limb and say they’re not strictly necessary for either a fully-rounded human being or a happy childhood.

TL;DR: Here’s what I think is necessary:

• Relax

• Leave the child alone

• Encourage independence (or, Richard Gere’s childcare advice)

• Talk with them, a lot, from the beginning

• Play, and what toys does the young child need?

• Get ready for writing

• Read every day

• Count!

This isn’t just my own personal advice. There are links throughout to people with more experience and wisdom than me, that I hope you’ll find useful.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

Via Unsplash

Relax

If you’re conscientious enough, and literate enough, to be reading this, chances are your child has already hit the jackpot. Children grow up in remote Inuit communities, in nomadic desert tribes, and in high-rise tower blocks in the middle of giant cities. There is no perfect childhood environment that will create the perfect human. Humans are amazingly adaptable.

Likewise, there are no perfect parents (despite what you may see online). We all have bad moments and bad days. Being a parent is hard! Sometimes when I’m going through a really rough patch I mention it to a fellow parent and they always know exactly what I’m talking about. The relief in those moments, that it’s not just you and your dysfunctional family, is enormous. So in case you don’t have a friend on hand, take it from me: you’re not alone. Of course we try to do the very best we can. But sometimes the best we can offer is survival mode, and that’s ok.

Leave the child alone

That’s DH Lawrence, in Education of the People. I’m not recommending all his advice (yikes), just this little bit.

You’re not your child’s entertainer or court jester. We all have to learn to be content in our own company, without constant distraction. In fact most adults could do with a refresher course.

If you always put stuff right in front of your child, you deprive them of the joy of discovery. If you interrupt or help them at the drop of a hat, you break their concentration and deprive them of the chance to focus or work it out by themselves. A key Montessori principle is ‘Never interrupt a child at work’. It’s really hard to do. It means you have to be busy with something yourself—but not too busy, because the child will inevitably want you within a few minutes.

Boredom is not bad. It is a great driver:

Natural selection has favoured individuals with the capacity to feel bored because they are more likely to discover or create things that improve their survival chances.

BBC Science Focus

Boredom = discovery and creation. But only if you give it the chance. Boredom is a problem to be solved, but you don’t have to be the one to solve it for your child, every time.

It’s not about ignoring your child. Think of it more as two people, with two independent lives and two sets of work to be doing. Your work might be preparing lunch, or reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Your child’s work might be investigating their toes, or discovering what happens when they drop pencils on the floor, over and over again. Another Montessori tenet: Play is the work of the child. Leave your child to his play. Resist the temptation to interrupt.

Like any skill, we get better at being left by ourselves and concentrating on something the more we do it. To begin with your child might only manage a few minutes. Let them practise and they will get better and better.

Via Unsplash

Encourage independence (or, Richard Gere’s childcare advice)

In the short term, it’s so easy to do everything for our children. But children can learn to do so much if we just let them and have the patience for it to take a long time in the beginning. And this doesn’t just apply to things like putting on their own shoes. Children like having agency (who doesn’t?). They don’t have very much power in this world, so where we can empower, we should.

Consider where you could give them control. Could the paper be somewhere they can reach, so they don’t have to ask for help every time they want to draw? Could their crockery and cutlery be on a low shelf, so they can get it themselves? Are their drawers only stocked with seasonally-appropriate clothes so they can choose their own outfits without you having to step in? Is it easy for them to put things away and tidy up, or have you inadvertently made it so complicated or inaccessible that anyone’s heart would sink at the thought of it?

Give them the power to choose whenever possible. Apple or banana for snack? What socks would they like to wear today? You’re gong to a playground, which one would they like to go to? Decision-making is a skill, and if we decide everything for our children they don’t get any chance to practise for themselves. It’s good for them to consider their own preferences instead of having everything decided for them, every time.

In the movie The Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts doesn’t know how she likes her eggs because she always likes them the way her current partner likes them. She defends this:

“That is called changing your mind.”

But Richard Gere responds:

“No, that’s called not having a mind of your own.”

Give your child space to have a mind of their own. And when they’re being awkward, and you wish they were just a little more malleable and accommodating, consider what you’ll want when they’re a young adult, out in the world on their own. Malleable and accommodating? Or someone who has a mind of their own?

(When they’re being just a little too independent for your liking, the parenting book I’d recommend above all others is How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen. The world would be a happier place if every parent read this book.)

Talk with them, a lot, from the beginning

Perhaps the most important skill we all have to learn is how to get along with the other 8 billion people on the planet, and the best way to get along with them is to be able to listen, and talk, and empathise. To be able to read them like a book. In this essential area of study, you are your child’s first book. Talking with them from the beginning has repercussions for the years ahead:

Children whose parents spoke to them least came out worst in language tests, and at 24 months old some lagged behind their contemporaries by up to six months. The handicap often stayed with the children and influenced how well they did at school over the next six years.

Prof Anne Fernald, a developmental psychologist at Stanford University, said chatting with infants helped them grasp the rules and rhythms of language at an early age and provided them with a foundation to build up an understanding of how the world worked.

From Talking to babies boosts their brain power, studies show

It might feel weird, in the beginning, to talk to someone who can’t talk back and who doesn’t have a clue what you’re saying. But start anyway. Describe what you’re doing, let them in on your thoughts. You’re helping them to build a picture of the world, and very soon they’ll be joining in.

Talking with your young child is the only curriculum you need. As they grow, they’ll want to know about everything they see. Be led by them, observe what they’re drawn to, and you can’t go wrong.

Play

Were you paying attention when I said that play is the work of the child?

On the importance of play in a child’s life, the best I can do is point you to the Substack of

Peter Gray

of Play Makes Us Human. Peter wrote Free to Learn, and is the authority on why our children need to play. Here are a few of the choicest quotes from his Substack:

Research, proving what should be obvious, shows that play is a direct source of children’s happiness. When children are asked to depict or describe activities that make them happy, they depict or describe scenes of play. There is also research showing that when children are allowed a little more play—such as when schools offer a little more recess—the kids become happier. (From #15 Play Deficit as Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Health)

Imagination allows us to think about tomorrow, plan, invent. Imagination provides the foundation for what logicians regard as our most advanced way of reasoning—hypothetico-deductive reasoning. If this were true, then what else must also be true? Children exercise their capacity for imagination continuously in all sorts of play, as almost all play has an element of imagination. (#5 Play Is How Children Practise All Essential Human Skills)

Children in all cultures learn to abide by rules through play. They also learn to create and modify rules in play, and they discover that the purpose of rules is to make the game fair and fun, which ideally is also the purpose of rules in the long-term game we call life. (#5)

Play is one small word, easily overlooked and under-appreciated. But a child who is playing is doing exactly what they need to do.

Updated: Peter kindly sent me the following addition to this section:

Beginning around age 3 or 4 (and even earlier if mixed with 3- and 4-year-olds)  children gain most by playing with other children—preferably in age-mixed groups—without adult control. This is how children have always gained the most valuable skills and it is what children are most deprived of in our modern world. In today’s world, opportunities for such play don’t come naturally. Parents have to figure out how to create them. A totally play[based] nursery school can do it, as can a parent-created co-op of homeschoolers.  

Via Unsplash

What toys does the young child need?

Short answer: very few! Play is essential, but toys much less so. Children are made for play. Any parent who has taken a child to a child-free home that is devoid of toys, or a shop that is expressly not designed for children, will know that children will find things of interest whether you want them to or not.

There is so much, so much, that we could buy for our children. And most of it is screaming at us that it is beneficial for x, y, or z. Resist. When tempted to buy something, think about whether your grandmother or her mother had something similar, or if they managed to survive without it, and still grew into a functioning human being. Consider also how your child copes when you go away to a holiday home or a grandparent’s house that isn’t stuffed with toys. Children are often perfectly content without the smorgasboard of toys we might provide at home.

I’m not against toys for children. I want to buy pretty much everything that Myriad Online sells. But too many toys is simply overwhelming for our children, and the wrong sorts of toys clutter up our homes, denude our bank accounts, drive us crazy with their endless electronic noises, and don’t even entertain our children.

Play comes from within the child, from their own imagination. This means that the flashiest, most expensive toys often have the shortest period of interest, because you can’t impose your own imagination on them. It’s all been done for you. Whereas a pebble, or a bag of blocks, or a few simple dolls, can be anything a child wants them to be.

Here’s a short list of some of the toys I think are a good place to start for young children:

• A basket of objects, like smooth pebbles, prickly pine cones, a wooden spoon… you can refresh these with new items as you find them and as your child’s interests and skills develop.

• Wooden blocks

• Nesting and stacking toys

• Dolls—not fancy dolls that burp and cry, but simple ones. My children have really enjoyed playing with ones like this.

• Duplo and, later, Lego.

• Toy animals, either the realistic Schleich sort, or small, smooth wooden ones which are so lovely to hold.

Also, although wooden toys are gorgeous and, we hope, more eco-friendly, plastic is cheaper and I don’t think you should feel bad about using it. I write this as someone with huge eco-anxiety and guilt. My own children have used the plastic toys my brother and I used when we were children. Not all plastic is throw-away plastic. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t afford the perfect wooden version of every toy.

And finally, the 3 Rs…

Getting ready for writing

There’s no magic moment when your young child should be able to write their name, and you don’t need to push them to do so. What you can do is provide lots of opportunities for them to use their hands, strengthen their little muscles, and get used to holding and controlling small objects with their fingers.

Via Unsplash

Anything fiddly is good. The younger the child, the more chunky the objects should be, getting gradually smaller and more fiddly. At the Montessori nursery my daughter went to, they used sugar tongs and marbles as one activity, with children carefully transporting the marbles from one dish to another. Threading shoelaces through holes, painting with big chunky brushes (or indeed fingers), pouring drinks from jugs and serving food with spoons, opening jars, padlocks, zips, buttons etc. Playing with Lego and playdough. All these things will help a child to write when the time comes.

And writing needn’t be restricted to pencils and paper. Chunky chalk on the patio, drawing with sticks in mud, sand, or snow, writing with water and brushes on hot pavements and watching the writing disappear as it evaporates. Nice fat wax crayons and a big roll of butcher paper so they can get their whole body involved in drawing, not just the muscles of one hand. All these things encourage a child to have fun making their mark.

Read, every day

Does this go without saying? Probably. But you can’t write about educational advice for parents of young children without mentioning reading. At the least, a bedtime story that’s a non-negotiable part of your daily routine means reading happens automatically. For tiny children, you don’t need loads of books. Children love repetition and it’s really important. If you can recite your child’s favourite books by heart, you’re on the right track.

For our favourite books from age 0–7, see this post. And for all the reading suggestions and advice you could ever want, see Can We Read.

At some point, children become interested in how those black squiggles on the page mean that you can say the same words, over and over again, whenever you open the book. You can start to teach them what sound each letter says, and when they’ve mastered that you can show them how putting letters, or sounds, together makes a word. There’s no timetable for this, some children are ready sooner than others just like some learn to walk sooner than others. Keep it relaxed. If they’re not keen, leave it for a few months and try again. There’s no necessity for them to be reading before school age, but my own experience has taught me that some children are ready and willing before that point.

There are a million books and websites to teach you how to teach your child to read. I’m only an expert in my own children. I know that phonics has its detractors and doesn’t work for everyone, but if I were advising a parent of a young child on reading, I would feel remiss not telling them that there is a huge body of evidence to support phonics as an effective way to teach readers of age 4-7ish how to read. You might like to read this article about one parent’s experience of teaching a child to read using the classic book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I also recommend Montessori Read and Write, which has lots of ideas to get children ready for literacy.

Count!

I’m not saying your child should be counting in 7s by the time they’re school age. I’m not saying they should be doing worksheets. I’m certainly not suggesting you quiz them on number bonds in the playground.

But maths is all around us, and young children can become familiar with it simply as part of everyday life. This is the perfect time to demonstrate to your child that maths is fun, that it’s something to play with and explore, not something to fear. Early maths is all about developing number sense: having fun with numbers, getting to know how they work and how they work together. Count the ducks on the pond, the candles on the cake, the buttons on Paddington’s coat. A lot of early maths in my family was food-related, but maybe that’s just me.

Via Unsplash

You don’t need a plan, a curriculum, or special maths equipment. The following comes from Learning Together: What Montessori Can Offer Your Family:

“There is no need to ‘do maths’ with the young child. Counting, numbers, shapes and sizes, measuring, sorting, pairing and matching; these are all part of the child’s world:

• Stories, rhymes, and songs often include counting and other maths skills such as shapes and sizes.

• Board games, cards, and dice games are excellent for practising maths skills from simple number recognition and counting up to complicated operations such as multiplication and division.

• Sorting, pairing and matching by size and shape is the basis for many children’s games (such as memory and lotto games) and puzzles, but it also takes place in all sorts of everyday contexts—gathering the right blocks to build something, pairing shoes or matching socks, or comparing different tomatoes grown in the garden for example.

• Dealing with money is great for skills such as addition, subtraction, rounding and counting by twos, fives, and tens.

• Activities such as setting the table or handing out treats to friends is a natural way to practise one-to-one correspondence.”

(One-to-one correspondence is the ability to count individual objects in a group, saying the numbers as you go: “1 car, 2 cars, 3 cars, 4 cars. There are four cars in the garage!” This is totally different from being able to rattle off your numbers to 100 but not having any more idea what you’re saying than if you were reciting the lyrics of the White Album backwards, in Swedish.)

In conclusion

Our children can’t wait to discover the world, and we get to go along for the ride. One of the joys of educating our children, whatever age they are, is finding that we are educating ourselves, too. Your child will learn to read, and write, and count, and you can certainly support them and encourage them in this. But those are just three of the innumerable skills to learn and discoveries to make. Don’t rush.

Don’t aim for perfection and don’t give yourself or your child a tick-list of objectives to achieve. Relax. Have fun!

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If you have/had young children of your own, I’d love to hear your advice to new parents about what really matters in those early years. Feel free to share in the comments.

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