Everyday Opportunities

And no, I don’t mean the figurative variety. I mean actual carrots.

We often have this perception that “schooling” or “education” has to mean sit-down, formal lessons.  But especially in the early years, that’s not really the case.  There are many opportunities in everyday life to teach essential skills — like the other night when I was cutting up carrots.

Livia was standing on stool beside me, watching me cut the carrots.  I had already peeled them and cut off the yucky ends, so I had a stack of “skinned” carrots sitting off to my left, waiting their turn, and I was working on cutting one into “coins.”  The carrots to my left had rolled into two slightly-separate piles.

Oddly enough, although Livia still can’t count very well on her own, she immediately recognizes two, three, or four of something when she sees them.  So she looked at one little group of three carrots that had rolled off sort of by itself and commented that there were “three carrots.”  As there were, indeed, three carrots, I confirmed her observation and asked her about the other mini-pile (four carrots).  We then proceeded to count all of the carrots and I pointed out that 3 (pointing to the pile of three) + 4 (pointing to that pile) = 7 (both piles).

By this time, I had finished with the carrot I was cutting and was ready to take another out of the pile, so we worked out seven minus one.  Then of course there were six minus one, then five minus one, and so on.

All of this happened without Livia’s ever feeling like she was “doing school.” (An unfortunate side effect of learning in this way is that my children will insist that they “never do school”!)

What everyday opportunities have you found lately to teach your children (either academically or spiritually)?