Thursday, June 14, 2012

Homeschool debate in my head

     Today, Seneca chose out three books for me to read to her. They were The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, Fox in Socks by Dr. Suess, and Corduroy by Don Freeman.
  I read an article today that said that a child's intelligence was more greatly affected by having the same stories read over and over again.  This helps strengthen their memories. That is not to say that they don't learn from a library book which is read and then exchanged, but that the type of learning from repetition is different.
  In the meantime, I have to learn some more fairy tales to recite to her.  She enjoys hearing the ones she knows, but she is eager to hear some new ones.  I have  a collection of fairy tales, but now I need to really get some new stories down in mind before I can bring them to her.  Before learning about Waldorf education, I had never considered the role of story telling in regards to language acquistion.  However, as is pointed out in Waldorf articles, the child must really depend so greatly on their own imagination to fill in the images when I story is told rather than read.  This helps develop listening as well as visualization skills.  In our world of ipads, iphones, and instant images, we have lost so much of the basic skills of simple foundational learning. 
  Right now, I am really on the fence as to whether I should homeschool Seneca or just send her to public school in the Fall. She will be entering kindergarten this Fall.  On the one hand, my oldest daughter did great at public school kindergarten and at learning to read.  I think Seneca could benefit from being in a class and having lessons presented. She is a very social child.
  On the other hand, I worry about not being able to meet her needs emotionally.  She has older siblings who will be in an advanced program at their school and I'm in school as well.  Not only do I want to be there for Seneca, I also want to be there for my other children as well.

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