I am a homeschool mom to three children. I also do child development work. If there is one form of education I would advocate to anyone, it is this: stories. Of all kinds. When I go to write my book on children at aged 5 and older, stories are going to take central role. To teach literally anything–science, math, history, literature, life wisdom–literally STORIES are the best. I can’t begin to tell you how well my 8-year-old son understands math because we read the book Humble Pi by Matt Parker: reading over and over stories of when people got math wrong and it caused problems. We’ve read several history series, all of them twice if not four times. We constantly have side discussions about what we just read. It encourages us to look up something interesting, such as the bonsai tree video I showed my children just last week. We put on plays constantly, such as pretending to be a Chinese empress, which I did with my daughter and her friend a few weeks ago. Stories, stories, and more stories.
And don’t forget YOUR story. Tell them stuff about you. One of the stories I tell my children is a time my dad got ants in his pants, ran up to a a bathroom in the second story of our house, and threw his pants out the window. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. My kids find the story funny, too.
A great story to tell is how you met your other. If this isn’t a story you can or want to tell–my apologies. Again, please tell YOUR story. But this lends itself so easily to a special night. On your anniversary of whatever, take your kids out. Enjoy a meal and a little bit into it, start telling your story. I can’t begin to tell you how magical it is.
We did this last January 16, 2021, the anniversary of the first date with my husband.
I can’t tell you magical of a night it was. My kids got the biggest kick out of it. I told them all about how I got us stuck in a snow ditch. We talked about things they found relevant, such as what movies we went to see in 2004, which they have since also watched. And don’t forget to tell them scandolous things, such as who kissed who.
Amber’s book series is Misbehavior is Growth. The idea is to see your children’s age-related “misbehavior” as a a clue that they are ready to learn something new. Protect their wild growth–with wildly misbehaving lessons and stories.