Tips & tools to support your homeschooling program.

The Importance of Self-Love

Your child longs for your juicy and focused connection and attention. This secure love and attachment builds their foundation of trust and belonging, and sets them up for healthy relationships throughout their lives.

Homeschooling gives you an amazing opportunity to nurture this connection throughout the day, pacing the time you have together and the time everyone works or plays independently.

Make sure that you honour both ways of being. Everyone needs to enjoy their alone time, and learn healthy ways to self-soothe.

By giving yourself permission to take a break and do something for yourself each day, you can be fully present for your child(ren) when you are giving them connection.

​By caring for yourself, you are teaching your child(ren) the importance of self-love.

​What do you do to re-charge?

Writing Begins Holistically.  In Year 1 of the Daily Wonder curriculum, the alphabet is introduced in an imaginative, pictorial way.  Each letter of the alphabet is presented as a picture representing an element from a story the children are told. For example, they might hear the story of a knight on a quest who had to cross mountains and a valley. The children will then draw a picture with the letter “M” forming the Mountains on either side of the “V” for Valley.

In this way, the child develops a living relationship with each letter rather than going straight to the abstraction of the alphabet letters themselves. These ‘pictures’ can be described as the bridge between the pictorial thinking of the child and the abstract thinking of the adult.
After learning all the letters, children experience copying mom or dad’s writing into their portfolio. The portfolio is an artistically created record of the learning that children using Daily Wonder curriculum create themselves. These first written sentences and stories come from the children’s own experience, and the children’s first practice of ‘reading’ is the reading of their own text.

Reading begins with decoding.  It is important to know that reading requires decoding skills that develop in children at varying ages. At Daily Wonder we understand that learning to read will unfold naturally in its own time for the vast majority of children when given the proper support.

Just as a normal, healthy child will learn to walk without our teaching them, and just as a child miraculously learns to speak their native language by the age of three without lessons, worksheets or a dictionary, so will a child naturally learn to read when they have a positive relationship with the spoken and written word and have been provided with the necessary tools and skills.

At Daily Wonder we follow the well-researched three-year Literacy program set out by Janet Langley and Jennifer Militzer-Kopperl in their book “The Roadmap to Literacy.” Over the three years of the program (Years 1 through 3), Daily Wonder supports parents to bring the six layers of literacy to their children (phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, writing). 
Once the child receives the alphabet letters and sounds pictorially and through verse and song, they begin to learn approximately 33 phonics rules over the three years. The rules support understanding and skill-building for future spelling and reading. Vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing are regular parts of the daily lesson plans and expand over time. 
Classic books expand vocabulary. At Daily Wonder, we encourage parents to provide their child(ren) with age-appropriate, well-written literature to expand their vocabulary and keep their love for reading alive. We also love a good graphic novel for those who need shorter reading stints to maintain their enthusiasm for reading. Practice is key, and preference is personal.  

There can be negative impacts of pushing reading too early.  Research has shown the negative impacts of pushing academics, such as reading, at too early an age. Forcing children to read too early often hurts their self-confidence and general passion for books. This research indicates that kindergarten and preschool-aged children should focus on age-appropriate activities such as playing, exploring and socializing. Finland is an excellent example of this, given that its schools lead the world in education standards. Finnish children generally don’t start kindergarten until age 6. And kindergarten is focused mainly on play and socialization; there is no reading or writing. Additionally, their school days are not more than 4 hours long.

Daily Wonder’s teachers are saying that children who read when they are ready can maintain a passion for stories and a love of reading further into their older years. In our experience, when reading is not rushed before writing, students are typically reading at or above standardized government levels and with improved comprehension. ​
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I think we can all agree that we want our kids to love reading and have the ability to express their heart's desires and gifts in writing and speaking.  

Having an Extra Bad Day!?!
 
Next time you feel flustered about something your child is doing (or not doing), recognize that giving energy to what is not working is really not the best route.

Take a deep breath, and if you need to walk away for a moment to get grounded, go ahead and do so.

When you return to the scene, find something positive that your child is doing that can be highlighted. Sometimes the scene is so negatively charged, that the best positive thing you can find is actually something like, "I see that you're not throwing your toys against the wall. This shows that you are getting better at managing your emotions." 

​When you are able to give authentic, positive feedback, it really does help your child to feel positive about themselves, and it guides them towards self-regulation.

Smile! Take a deep breath! You and your child are probably readjusting to school after a little holiday break!

Be patient and ease back into your routine. Choose one or two parts of your daily routine that are working well and allow yourself to feel amazing about it - because you really should.

​When you focus on what is fantastic and feel happy about the little victories, you invite more of that energy into your life!

The Nurtured Heart Approach is a relationship-focused methodology founded by Howard Glasser.  This approach meets the needs of the parent and child both individually and in relationship. It is comprehensive in its scope, recognizing each person's incredible greatness and individuality and specific and practical in its steps to build these feelings of inner wealth. 

​Watch for Nurtured Heart Tips weekly and visit our Parent Education page to learn more.