Alison Curtis: Finding moments across the summer to teach my daughter
I might get into big trouble here and have a lot of people roll their eyes skywards at what I am about to admit. I am going to do school work with my daughter Joan this summer.
I can already hear the thousands of voices saying “Let them have a summer!” “After all they have been though” “Leave her be!!”
But before that happens, what I mean by “schooling” this summer is I am going to be more present and creative in creating lots of learning experiences over the next number of weeks.
I was recently on a walk with a wonderful pal of mine and at so many points she stopped to talk to her seven-year-old about why some trees grow taller than others, what water is really made up of, the planets, nature, animals. She took so many things that we stumbled across as an opportunity to gently teach her daughter all sorts of facts about the world we live in.
It made me realise I wasn’t doing that enough with Joan. Of course we have discussions about things Joan is curious about but I am missing so many chances to teach her about things without her thinking it is a lesson.
The next day, Joan and I decided to do some baking which is a fabulous chance to talk about the “science” of mixing ingredients, what each ingredient does as well as talking about measurements.
Another chance came when we went on a walk on our holidays in Roscommon and along the way there were plaques with facts about the various trees in the forest as well as stories about trees in Irish folklore and culture.
I hope this all sounds reasonable but what I am about to say might not. When Joan brought her books home from school I went through them and noticed how much of each book was left empty, obviously due to lockdown and our children not being in the classroom for so many months of the year.
So I asked her if she would be “up for” filling in some of the blanks, primarily in her mental maths book, and she was. So each day we do one or two columns of questions just to keep it all fresh in her mind. I also bought her a brilliant book by Carol Vorderman to help Joan with her times tables and she loves it. Carol you genius! Whatever way the book is presented Joan doesn’t look at it as a chore to scan through it a few times a week.
The other major project this summer is to get Joan reading a lot more and for it to not be a battle. She does fight it, unfortunately, and is not naturally drawn to it as a pastime. In order to try to solve this, I bought a fourth class reader, which has such a wide variety of short stories she is always finding one she likes.
I am fully aware that all students across the world are in the same position of having such interrupted learning for the past two academic years. I just want to set Joan up so she can enter fourth class with confidence. I also want to be more aware myself of those moments across the day that can be teaching moments. To help Joan’s fun and curious mind develop further.
On the flip side, I am also aware that kids need their downtime, wild time, free play and making a mess time across the summer. Just sometimes out of the mess I am sure a bit of knowledge can be passed down to the next generation.
