I am a mom first and foremost, but as a mom I feel that it is important that I be my children's first teacher.
From those first moments of reading to my growing belly, to trying to find math problems that stump my seven year old (which can be quite the challenge with my math minded kid, I have to say!), I am always 'teaching'.
Most of the time I don't even realize that I am doing it, I am just playing and having fun with them(or trying to get them out of my hair).
And sometimes, they surprise me by revealing just how much they know, especially when it's a subject that I don't feel like I have worked with them much on.
Tyson doesn't like to show us how smart he is, in fact, when we ask him to count he will often start by saying, 1, 2, 7, 8, 13 (with a sly smile on his face...he knows he isn't doing it right).
So, when I got the math mat out for the older kids to play with, I didn't think that he would want to have anything to do with it.
When he asked for a turn and I set it up for him (to identify the numbers 1-10), I was extremely shocked that he knew a lot of them.
The way that he learned them was by playing with his Thomas choo-choo's.
He was associating the numbers with the engines they went with.
For instance, Thomas was 1, Percy was 6, and so on.
I smiled, it was such a GREAT moment!
I knew then that all of those hours spent playing with, and watching trains was paying off!
I wish, that as a teacher, I was able to discover what motivates each and everyone of my students to learn and then create individual plans and goals for each of them.
I think that I can do this to a certain extent, but I worry that there aren't enough hours in the day!
Tyson was able to learn his numbers and his colors simply by loving his trains and playing with them...not by us counting with him or showing him the numbers.
This time, I was the one who was the one getting the lesson.
I love it when my kids teach me a thing or two!
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