SCHOOL AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT!
As to continue the RAISE UP YOUR KIDS & ENJOY THE RIDE articles, we talk this time about the skills development stage. We can call it the INDEPENDENCE phase! It actually starts with the first day at school. A Mother has the choice to make it happens for her kid or to continue over protecting her child and make him/her depending on someone for a lifetime!
This stage needs the courage to start trusting your kid's abilities and to become more observant as a facilitator than being an implementer /a clock and/or a secretary...
Provide the tools to help them organise their schedule but never to prepare it yourself. Put shelves, provide drawers and/or boxes and show them how to use each. Let them prepare their bags before going to school.
Do not work as a clock to remind them of what they should be doing or studying. It will take them a failure for only one time and then they will learn how to do it properly. Be courageous and let it happens under your supervision!
Help your kids overcome the emotional shocks they might face at school like: if a colleague they love is not really keen on establishing a friendship, or if too many colleagues would have loved to become friends. Discuss the matter with your kids and help them to fix their social problems at school as this might cause allot of damages if not solved. For instance, help them finding an alternative friend. Encourage group gatherings outside the school and group activities as this develops their emotional intelligence.
Try to answer their questions and take them serious. Also help them to search for answers themselves like looking up the dictionary, searching in atlas/encyclopaedias, or searching the web if available.
Put an eye on them but let them act independently. It makes your life easier by the way and makes their life more fun!
Do not focus with scores as focusing on the development that happened to your child. Be cool when hearing a bad mark they have got and try to understand the reason more than blaming them. Help them develop the skills they lack by attending extra courses, reading books, watching educational videos online and/or asking experts.
Do not stop building with blocks, making art work using play dough or clay. Draw between all activities and make it a daily habit.
Sports are very important, let them choose which sport would they like to practice and help them to find the perfect trainer/school. The attitude of the trainer is very important to be on the same level of understanding for the concept of “education without fears”. Choose the trainer who makes the sport/activity enjoyable. If no fun, no development…
Watch the geometry in each apple you cut. See the star shape in the heart of the red cabbage. Watch the dome construction while preparing a water million or a cantaloup. Dream with the composition inside a mandarine clove! Geometry is a very important topic to meditate around and study in early ages...
Teach them Origami...
Organise trips to the desert, the forest, the mountain, the river and the sea. Let them grow with nature as part of it not as an outsider!
