Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Unschooling a 2 year old

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!


Many people think that you do not really start the schooling process until your children are 3 or 4 for preschool or 5 or 6 for kindergarten, however, unschooling a 2 year old is a wonderful experience.  I have an intense, inquisitive little 2 year old man who absolutely loves to learn and once I started noticing that he was capable of doing many of the things that the older children do, he has been so much happier to be included in the learning process. I have three children, a 7 year old boy, 5 year old girl, and 2 year old boy, so today as I describe unschooling a 2 year old, I will mainly focus on my 2 year old, but also compare his learning to the older two when they were his age.  Since we had not started any formal schooling yet, since we initially started with a more structured approach with my oldest son, when he was 2 years old, he was also unschooled, it is just natural learning.


Reading/Language Arts:  My 2 year old loves books, he just loves them.  If he could sit and look through books or have me read to him all day long, he would.  Reading is also a great way for language development.  I probably read to my two year old at least 2 hours a day because he makes me do it.  He sits me down in a chair and grabs books and says, "read me this!"  He's really bossy. So I read him whatever books he wants to read.  Then after each book, he will read the book back to me. He has the ability to memorize a simple book after reading it one time, by simple, I mean three or four word sentences on each page.  So we read, read, read together.  When my daughter was 2, she was very similar and loved reading book after book after book.  My oldest son was different.  He did not like reading books very much and was difficult to understand at the age of two.  Instead, he was able to dress himself at a very young age, maybe a little over one.  So he would dress like super heroes mostly and run around the house acting like his favorite character, so I would read to him while he was doing back flips off the couch, rolling around on the floor, jumping on the bed, etc.  He just did not like sitting and reading like the other two.  He is more of a mover when he learns, otherwise, he zones out. 


Math:  Math is everywhere.  My daughter loves having her nails painted because she's a girly girl.  Well, my 2 year old is a girly boy, well, sorta, he is really a brute, but anyway, he also loves having his nails painted and he has to have his toe nails and finger nails painted.  When we do this, we count to 100.  He seems to be stuck counting 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2... and has been stuck at this for a very long time.  sometimes he will count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, if he is repeating after me, but then on his own, he goes back to 3, 2, 3, 2...  He may not be an overly quick math kid.  My oldest son could probably count to about 30 at the age of 2 and my daughter could probably count to 5 or 10.  We all have our strengths.  He loves helping me fetch the eggs from the chicken coop and we will count the eggs.  We count his cars a lot because he loves playing with cars and he also loves helping me bake cookies, muffin or cook dinner.  He is a great helper, so we do a lot of measuring with cooking.   Measuring is a great visual for learning math.  My two year old has always loved cars and trains and loves creating track sequences for the trains with his sister. So he is able to learn math visually through this.


Science:  My two year old boy loves science.  He loves going to the science museum and exploring hands on to see how everything works.  He loves one area where he can push a button and watch a ball float up into the air or push a button to watch the hot air balloon inflate and float to the ceiling.  He loved doing an activity at the Indianapolis Children's Museum where a vacuum would suck a ball into this machine and he would watch it go into the air.  He did this over and over and would probably still be doing it if we did not make him stop.  He is fascinated by movement and what makes things move.  He has always had a fascination with cars and trains.  He also loves animals.  He has always been a dog lover, but now he is starting to explore other animals.  He finds elephants fascinating.  He loves watching the Baby Einstein videos over and over and will often pick out books or videos with animals at the library.  He loves any animal, zoo animals, farm animals, it does not matter.  He loves imitating animal sounds also and act out their movements.  My daughter participates in science activities, but does not seem to have as much of a fascination with them as the boys do.  She does science activities now, at 5, but at two, she was more interesting in reading and being creative artistically.  My oldest son, who is 7 years old, is a science guy.  He loves every aspect of science, animals, and the human body.  At two, he was very interested in super heroes, their movements and behaviors and started having a fascination with monkeys and apes at that young age and this is still a passion of his.


History:  My two year old boy loves old cars and seeing old buggies and how things moved from the beginning of time.  He also loves looking at family pictures with his brother and sister.  This is recent history, but far in the past for someone who was born less than three years ago.  I will read history books to the older children and he will listen also, but since his main interest is cars, he really gets passionate when we are talking about the history of cars while he does not seem to be as interested in other history unless his family is involved directly.


Art:  My two year old loves art.  This is my daughter's strong subject.  She loves to paint, so since she wants to paint a lot, so does my two year old son and he is very amazing at expressing himself through painting and art.  He will often take objects and incorporate them into his art, such as nature or magnetic letters.  It does not matter, he just loves creating.  He also likes to draw and loves trying to draw cars, mummies, and penguins.  He loves combining colors and started learning his colors when he was one years old.  We always talks about the colors of his cars and he will name colors of cars as we are driving around.  We are always aware of all of the colors of cars that surround us when my two year old is with us.  My daughter and older son also loved art at two, but may not have been as advanced with their knowledge of colors at this age as my youngest son.  He is just fascinated by colors, especially when a car is involved.


Music:  My 2 year old boy loves music.  He loves making up songs about his cars and will mimic show tunes or any music he hears.  He can really belt out his songs and sings very on-tune for a two year old.  He is a great song writer.  We are a musical family.  I do a lot of singing while my husband plays guitar and drums and we also have a piano.  My 2 year old son is very drawn to the drums and can keep a beat well at his young age.  My daughter has always loved singing, dancing and piano while my oldest son would try to play guitar when he was two to imitate his father and sing.  I think my younger two may have more of the music gene than my oldest son, but I guess we will find this out with time.


As you can see, a two year old can very enthusiastically participate in the unschooling process.  He is developing a love for learning at his young age and I try to encourage him by reading to him as much as he wants, letting him write in my journal, count with him and let him help whenever he wants to help with preparing food.  He makes learning seem like so much fun.  He is very inspirational with his enthusiasm.  I love two year olds.  So far, it is one of my favorite ages.  So if you have a little one, there is no limit on when you can start unschooling them.  Life is learning.





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