With preschoolers so much learning comes naturally, through life experiences. One day you find that you are learning phonics by pointing to letters and saying the sound, and your child naturally repeats it. The next day you’ll hear your child crying excitedly from the back seat, “Look Mommy, it’s a ’sssssssss’!”, and pointing wildly, so proud of her recognition skills.

When reading a story aloud to your children you find their queries about new vocabulary words penetrating and insistent, “Mommy, what does ‘diverse’ mean?”, “Mommy, what does ‘unique’ mean?” Reading aloud must be THE best way for natural vocabulary building in your children.

But my favourite is math. As a child math was not too difficult until grade 4. I remember it well, long division was the beginning of my math challenges, and everything went downhill from there. But math does not need to be strenuous and there are many real life learning experiences to be had with math in a practical way. Preschool math is definitely the easiest for me to teach naturally and in context, since it isn’t above and beyond my own skill levels ;).

Our five year old counts well, and fairly consistently up to 30, although, I’ll admit she does sometimes jump from 8 to 21. She just needs a bit of coaching to get to 9 and she’s on her way! Did we use a fancy or expensive program to teach her with? No, we’ve just been counting simple every day items together.

At first it was, “We need to get 7 potatoes for lunch, let’s count them together, 1…..2…..3…..4….5…”

Now we’ve progressed to, “K, can you bring me 7 potatoes?” “Okay Mommy, 1…2…3…..4….5..”

We also play “1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Missionaries” on fingers or toes to the tune of “1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Indians”.

And our 2 year old is learning now too. When I count with K, R joins in, her little toddler voice saying “too, tee” is so sweet to my ears to hear how easily and naturally they learn through imitation.

And what other ways are there to teach our children through informal, natural techniques?  This homeschooling and unschooling blog has some more ideas and suggestions to browse through.