How much "enrichment" do you do at home with your kids?

[traveltheworld]

DH and I went to DS's kindergarten "demonstration of learning" night on Thursday and we were both quite surprised with the materials that were being taught.  For lack of a better way to describe it - it all seemed so easy.  Other than reading, which DS isn't great at, everything else was well below what he can do, and seemed to be below what he was doing back in his Montessori pre-school days.  We don't necessarily mind, since DS loves going, has never once complained about being bored, and is improving in the one area that he is weak at (reading).  Our thinking is - he has got another 12+ years of school left, so there's no huge rush.  The school is in the best district with very high scores, so we figure they must know what they are doing and at some point, the real "teaching" would start.  The thing that bothered us the most was that back in his Montessori pre-school, he learned a lot of non-strictly academic information: stuff like national flags, life cycle of plants and animals, etc.; which greatly expanded his overall knowledge base.  Whereas his current kindergarten seems to be just focused on the curriculum (reading, writing, very basic math).

Now we feel like we should supplement his learning by doing more stuff with him at home.  But we are busy.  And frankly, tired.  The only real "learning" activity we do with him is that we read to him and DD for about 30 - 45 minutes a day, but that's really it.  As part of that reading, we do some non-fiction stuff like National Geographic, but mostly it's just fiction books.  He is also in a math enrichment program outside of school and we do a bit of math with him whenever an opportunity comes up, but now we are wondering if we should be actively trying to teach him more stuff.  

So - do you actively try to teach your child/children more general knowledge stuff, and if so, how do you do it?  Sorry if this is a stupid question - he is my first and I have no experience with little kids and neither DH nor I can remember our elementary school days

[katrine05]

My daughter is also in K. However she just turned 5. Kids up here can start when they are 4 or young 5's. In discussing with waverly we've determined our grade 1 is more like K in the States. Add in that DD is at a French school and when she started in September she only knew a few colors and fruits in French. So she's learning a whole new language on top of the concepts. They are still working on letters, writing and basic math. They won't be working on learning to read in English until 3rd grade so I'm working on that with her. She's still working on expanding her vocabulary in French so I'll let the school teach her to read in French. We do a bit here and there but like you we both work and everyone is tired at the end of the day. There isn't much time for anything else.

[freezorburn]

Hit and miss here. Kind of depends what sort of week we are having.

DS gets 4 hours weekly of behavioral therapy, and spends about 12 hours in the afternoon at the Boys and Girls Club. Some of that overlaps. Because he struggles with social skills, I pretty much consider any opportunity at social interaction to be enrichment. They've got tons of activities for the kids at the club. I figure it's learn-to-be-a-kid time. Which my kid needs. He's an only child, and at home he only has me. So I've also been working hard to make sure he has a social life outside of school.

At home we've got lots of Legos and tons of arts and crafts stuff. I try to make at least one meal a week where he can help some part of the prep -- whether it's measuring and stirring, or building his own sandwich or topping his own pizza. I borrowed a pasta machine from a friend recently, thinking that making pasta might be a fun activity.

School would like us to be reading 20 minutes a day, but some weeks that is hard.

I'd really like to get more music into our home time ... he only wants to listen to Caspar Babypants, and hates it when I sing along. We have a piano and ukeleles and lots of little percussion instruments ... I'd like to introduce him to playing music but haven't gotten him to buy into it yet.

Weekends the emphasis has been on getting moving. For a while he took gymnastics and tae kwon do, but didn't love those. Nowadays he has skateboard class on Sundays, and today he started swim lessons. As the weather gets better we'll probably try integrating some hiking into our schedule, maybe work on cycling without training wheels. Also, children's theatre. We usually make it to several plays each season. And take advantage of our city's various cultural institutions. We live close to the zoo, we've got decent children's museum and science center and aquarium, etc. The art museum is also good, but at the moment it's most fun to make our own art at home.

When DS is with his dad, I think they do some math enrichment. DS has been telling me that 10 groups of 10 is 100, 10 groups of 20 is 200. But I can't tell if he really understands the concept, or if he is just scripting these sentences. Also, they do different arts and crafts than what I have.

One side effect of DS's autism is that he tends to get obsessively interested in things. The enduring interests seem to be trains and whales. I can work with both of these. Trains give us opportunities to talk geography, geology, climate, fuel, shipping and commerce, history, etc. With whales we can talk about ocean ecology, climate change, geography again, conservation, etc.

Looking forward to spring break and summer camps for more: Spring break he will have soccer camp in the morning. My parents will be visiting and I'm working with my dad to set up a day for lake fishing. For the summer DS has a lot of outdoor experiences scheduled, at least a week of art camp, more skateboarding, and he'll do at least a week of Boys and Girls Club day camp -- they do field trips and all kinds of stuff.

Other general knowledge: now that he's pretty comfortable with counting and some basic addition and subtraction, I've started talking to him about money. What things cost, how to save, etc.

[mommyatty]

DH’s Grandma was one of those kindergarten teachers who taught at the same school for 40 years and was absolutely beloved. And she was rabid that kindergarten should be about learning to be in school. She didn’t care if your kid could read or speak 7 languages or do algebra. Kindergarten was about learning to hold crayons correctly, cutting out shapes with scissors, and sitting quietly and paying attention during activities. We tend to agree that kindergarten is about physical and social development more than rote learning.

So we don’t worry too much but we do follow the kids’ interest. For example, both kids are really into space. We went to the Planetarium last week, and both kids have the planets up on their walls. They are fascinated by plants, so we are planting a 4x4 veggie garden. (We bough tomatoes and peppers yesterday, in fact.) And their grandma let them plant cantaloupe seeds, which have sprouted. No pun intended, for us it’s very organic.

[campermom]

At first grade we are supposed to be doing:

Sight words
Math facts
Reading (book at night)
She's also got 10-12 mins of private speech tongue exercises a night that requires one of us to be right with her
Now school wants us to read 3 chapters a night of the family chapter book. Right.

She should also be doing 10 mins of piano.


It's crazy. That doesn't include any sports. Or being shlepped to a siblings sport.
There's no time for anything else. I'm lucky if that stuff happens.

[cosmowife]

Honestly, all of this sounds like a little much. My kids barely did any reading in K (sight words only I think and maybe some super simple sentences). I don’t see how your son could be “behind” in reading at this age in pre K. We read at home as time allows and that’s about it. Kids will learn when they are ready to learn. My son is a very good reader now but it didn’t really click until second grade. No amount of help or tutoring would have changed that - the only thing that helped was time and his development.

My son started piano lessons toward the end of first grade and that is only because music is a priority to me and I am also a musician. It was a little on the young side IMO.

[waverly]

This is a tough question. In some ways everything I do at home is teaching them something (except maybe watching TV) on the other hand it's not all direct instruction or academic etc. I would speak more with the school to get a better understanding of their curriculum progression. DS is likely gifted but they don't do gifted programs in this school they do differentiated learning which means every kid gets different math and reading tests depending on their level. In K, ours was half day so there isn't a ton of time for other subjects. They do other things in the other half enrichment program and aftercare.

Daily I try to read to DD. DS reads on his own. DS has his PT and OT and does exercises 5 days a week. I am supposed to practice math and spelling with him but he has those concepts, so I haven't needed to do anything unless he struggles one week. Sometimes I talk to them in Spanish but it's not enough for them to learn the language it's just a few words here and there.

He is in basketball and both kids will start swim up again. DD was in gymnastics in the fall. He does a club that is for helping others and leadership and he also does cub scouts. DD does a little less because she is younger than him.

We have done tons of outings. They were educational but that's not really why we did them. It was more to get out of the house and do something so we've been to lots of museums and zoos and kid places etc. Lately I've been doing more play dates and the pool a lot in the summer. They have summer camp where they learn games and swimming.

Do you see what I mean? At this age there is so much to learn and they are sponges so they are learning from almost everything. Do I do science experiments no I don't. 😀They'll get there. We go to the library often and they are free to explore topics of their interest. I agree with mommyatty follow their interests. School is teacher led, so let Home be a bit more child led. Especially with reading for boys. They need to pick books in the area that interests them. Speaking of reading we also listen to audiobooks in the car so I can cross off reading for school with that too.

[k3am]

Mar 18, 2018 3:57:58 GMT -5 mommyatty said:

DH’s Grandma was one of those kindergarten teachers who taught at the same school for 40 years and was absolutely beloved. And she was rabid that kindergarten should be about learning to be in school. She didn’t care if your kid could read or speak 7 languages or do algebra. Kindergarten was about learning to hold crayons correctly, cutting out shapes with scissors, and sitting quietly and paying attention during activities. We tend to agree that kindergarten is about physical and social development more than rote learning.

So we don’t worry too much but we do follow the kids’ interest. For example, both kids are really into space. We went to the Planetarium last week, and both kids have the planets up on their walls. They are fascinated by plants, so we are planting a 4x4 veggie garden. (We bough tomatoes and peppers yesterday, in fact.) And their grandma let them plant cantaloupe seeds, which have sprouted. No pun intended, for us it’s very organic.

My sister was a kinder teacher for 15+ years and she agrees very much with your DH’s grandma.

[akafred]

This honestly bothered me a lot when I toured the public schools. They did have some nonfiction in the reading areas (a lot actually) but even that was super basic. It was hard to wrap my head around going from the opportunity to explore other cultures, various sciences, practical life skills, etc to focus almost 100% on reading and math with just some specials for music and art and whatever she read in books was hard to wrap my head around.

At home we do some things but not a ton. She loves science shows, and we do some experiments (baking soda and vinegar type). We usually do a science camp in winter at the science museum and possibly summer. She learns a ton about nature at outdoor camps. When she has some breaks from school with me I usually Dream up some things we can do that are educational. Like making constellations with string and stuff like that. But she is still in Montessori so she gets all the opportunities to explore still.

[sdlaura]

My DD is in K and we do zero enrichment stuff at home. We’re lucky if we can get the paper returned where we’re supposed to check off that we read books and she practiced her sight words each night. But I do feel like she’s learning a lot of non-core stuff at school. She’s always surprising me with factoids she’s learned about why we celebrate certain holidays, or how various things work from science class. She just goes to the public school on our street, but does yoga, drama, music etc during school, and she also goes to the after school program which is mixed grades, and I think she learns things about non-core subjects there too. Part of it is her personality though I think - in terms of actually wanting to tell us about things she knows (she’s a bit of a know it all like her mom . I don’t think I’d feel the same way about DS1 when he goes to school - it’s harder to guage what he’s learning because he won’t be as vocal about it.

[jr009j]

When I think about it, we do a lot but most of it is organic. Like when we read a book, we talk about the setting and find it in a map. She listens to a lot of books on tape. But a lot of the enrichment stuff she does at home is creative play and building, all of which I think is very important.

She also does a lot of workbooks at home, but on her own initiative. She asks for them in the store and does them on her own. Honestly I would prefer her to focus on free writing and being creative, but the way her mind works, she needs prompts.

ETA: she also gets a lot of enrichment from OT and Speech and does dance, yoga, tennis and piano as additional assistance for her OT objectives but all are enrichment too.

[sandandsea]

Our kindergarten is heavily focused on learning to read and write. They spend almost 75% of the academic day on language. We get homework charts that they chose activities from and a number of items to do each month along with reading 20 books or chapters. For March we have to do 18 items (read two books and compare contrast them, write three sentences, create a math word problem and solve it, jump rope for 5 minutes, circle maps, etc). So I would call those enrichment activities. We always read too. Sometimes I’ll pull our paints or we will dye Easter eggs, carve pumpkins, make cookies/dinner or play Osmo games and do other activities but we don’t do extra homework type activities.

[186momx]

K was basically a repeat of preschool/pre-k with the addition of reading/sight words. DD was bored. If your DS isn't complaining he is bored than I would add anything extra in.
Last year: I taught her to write her first and last name in cursive then went head to head with the teacher when he told her not to do it. Every week they had to trace these jumbo letters and it was a fight so the bribe was she did her homework then we learned to write the letter in cursive on an app then transfer it to paper. We also did tons of science and math stuff just to keep her engaged.

Jump to 1st. Still kind of bored but her teacher goes outside the box a lot with her so at home extras have gone way down hill. Cooking and dissecting food is her new thing thanks the British Baking show on Netflix. She also loves Magic School bus and will read or watch those whenever she can.
Each night DD is supposed to read 20 minutes, has sight words to work on, and gets 1 or 2 pages of math on Friday to do over the weekend. Math takes maybe 2 minutes. Yesterday her reading time was at the grocery store she was reading off the list and marking things off plus reading boxes at the store.

[ilovelucyvv]

H is big on continuing education at home but I don’t care for it. Whatever happens organically because of kids’ interests sounds good but im not going to force it.

[saraml13]

DS1 is a little younger, but we don’t do or plan to do much formal. I’m more about exposing them to naturally enriching environments (hiking in the forest, visiting the zoo, playing with block) vs trying to teach specific things. We don’t allow tv on weekdays and only a little morning screen time on the weekend. They have lots of toys that require them to manipulate or use their imagination (play kitchen, wooden train set, blocks) vs a lot of electronic toys. We read a lot. DS1 has started pointing out and asking about letters more often, so we follow his lead but don’t try to get him to read words.

Both my boys have October birthdays and miss the school cut off. I’m probably more laid back because I know they will be on the older side in their classes and have plenty of time.

[freezorburn]

As I think about this, I feel like so much of what I do is to combat the possibility of screen addiction. I am deathly afraid of DS turning into a device-addicted zombie. Because when DS gets his hands on the Kindle it is definitely a powerful drug. Sometimes it can be a source for creative ideas, but sometimes it can be really hard to pry him away from it.

[kimberlybb]

I have every intention of doing things at home but most weeks that only happens 25% of the time. I have a lot of workbooks DD likes doing. My Mom also makes books out of DD's sight word of the week that we read together but that's about it. She won't be in kindergarten till next year so I'm not really worried about it. I do really need to work more with my DS though who will be four in August. He will be transitioning to pre-school this summer from an in-home and I'm afraid he will be way behind his peers.

[covergirl82]

I have a first grader and a second grader. I'll be honest, I don't do much at home. (And I spent a little more time with the kids on letters, colors, shapes, numbers, and sight words when the kids were in preschool, but I also felt like we were paying the preschool to teach them those things.) We do homework (which isn't much) and they each read around 20-30 minutes before bedtime. Some nights they'll practice math on their school device for 10-15 minutes.

This summer they will go to the in-home DCP they went to before they started school, and most of the kids will be school age, so I know she will have them read during quiet time (instead of nap). I'm also planning to send math worksheets for them to work on.

[phdmomma]

DS is in 5K, and he comes home with some worksheets every weekend (usually some math and a game where you need a paperclip as a spinner, and some new sight words to go over). I don't have a good sense of what they do everyday in school, but he seems to love it. And has been learning a lot this year. I have a parent teacher conference next month, so I guess that we will see.

[justcheckingin73]

We don’t do anything but a lot of their “outside of school” learning comes up organically. Surprisingly, some of it comes from TV - we like to watch Would You Survive, Northwoods Law, Mountain Men, Planet Earth, Cooking Channel shows, etc. This sometimes leads to questions that we talk about or look up and learn more. 

In school, although he does a lot of reading and math, he also does science and surprises me with some of the things he has learned. He learned to read in Kindergarten so now in 2nd grade, his reading section includes learning as well - not just reading the words on the page but the content as well. They get Scholastic News which they read a couple of times a week and we also read it at home.

I have zero desire, time or energy to come up with my own curriculum for home. 

[jlaok]

I sometimes give my kids worksheets from this website:

www.worksheetfun.com/

They actually really like them and it is a good way to keep them busy on days that they don't have school. I will also use them for DD because she wants to do "homework" like DS.

[traveltheworld]

Thanks everyone!

[2chatter]

Our school K is the same as sandandsea.

All three of mine spend heaps of time doing things other parents might assign their kids - but it has nothing to do with me. DS writes his own word problems and solves them, for example. IDK why. DD memorizes Bible verses and designs these graphic representations of them. Middle DD relentlessly researches totally random things and makes endless lists of things. They all watch documentaries. I have enough to do and all three of them are way ahead of grade level (middle just tested at grade 12 in reading/writing, for example) so I totally slack in this area.