The Best Foundation is Love
By Contributing Mama Writer: Barbara Curtis

Barbara is a seasoned homeschooling mommy of 12 (yes, twelve blessings), now a grandmother of ten, and a happily married wife. Barbara is a “revert”, she was baptized Catholic then Evangelical for many years and has come back to our beautiful Faith! Barbara and her family are a ” Family-First kind of family.”

[This is the final installment in a four-part series: Why Your Preschooler Can Thrive at Home taken from a chapter in my book, Mommy, Teach Me! Read the first, The Best Teacher is Forever, the second, The Best Classroom Has No Walls, the third, The Best Lessons Don’t End at Noon, and Is Homeschool for Everyone?]

The Best Foundation is Love

Remember when you fell in love with the man you’d one day wed? You couldn’t spend enough time with him. Memorizing every angle of his face, discovering every nuance of his personality – you thought you’d never grow tired of it.

And when your first child was born, didn’t it feel as though you could never grow tired of gazing on that precious baby – even when sound asleep?

Ah, but we are human and the daily grind of living 24/7 with those we love can become just that – a grind. How quickly we forget the miraculous power of love.

I’m asking you to remember for a reason. I’m asking you to remember because when it comes to the recipe for a perfect teacher the most important ingredient is love. And no preschool teacher – no matter how much she cares in the classroom – will ever love your child as dearly and selflessly as you.

But I’m asking you to remember for another reason. As you begin to prepare yourself to teach your child, the first step will be to open your heart, to tap into that great well of love you’ve experienced before – before it got a little murky from all the peanut butter smears and wayward permanent marker. Before the fatigue and frustration found on the flip side of motherhood.

And finally, I’m asking because as you continue on the journey to becoming the best possible teacher for your child, I want you to find inspiration and confidence in the recognition of where all of us teacher/mommies begin. We love our children. We want God’s best for them.
And clearly God’s best for your child involves your maximum involvement through these early years.

Remember: God doesn’t call the equipped; he equips the called. Before your baby was born, you were probably not quite ready for motherhood. Good thing you had nine months or so to devote yourself to immersing yourself in the things you’d need to know to make it through childbirth, nursing and beyond – not to mention gathering all the stuff you’d need to prepare the best environment for baby.

Learning to be a mommy never stops – take it from someone who after 36 years is still learning and growing. If you’re at a loss for what to do with your preschooler, is that really so strange? And isn’t the fact that you picked up this book assurance that God will lead you in the right direction? That he hasn’t just called you to teach your child, but that he will equip you?

Yes, some of us tremble before the things God calls us to do. But God did not give us a spirit of fear, only the assurance that love is greater than our insecurities – that in Him we find our strength.

You don’t need a rigid method or a handbook with a hundred lessons. What you need are the keys to unlock the tremendous learning potential of your child – as well as your own potential to teach. Once you begin to use them, you will see your child – as well as your relationship – transformed. Then you will both discover the joy God intended in these early years – a joy that will spill over into a lifelong love of learning for your child.

But it starts with the simplest, most basic foundation. Your willingness to invest in your child – to stretch and grow in whatever ways you must – because you want the best for both of you.

The bottom line is love.

Love,

For more neat ideas by this Blogging Mama, please visit her Homeschooling journey: Mommy Life,

You can also get an autographed copy of her book Mommy, Teach Me!

The Best Lessons Don’t End at Noon
By Contributing Mama Writer: Barbara Curtis

Barbara is a seasoned homeschooling mommy of 12 (yes, twelve blessings), now a grandmother of ten, and a happily married wife. Barbara is a “revert”, she was baptized Catholic then Evangelical for many years and has come back to our beautiful Faith! Barbara and her family are a ” Family-First kind of family.”

[This is third in a four-part series: Why Your Preschooler Can Thrive at Home taken from a chapter in my book, Mommy, Teach Me! Read the first, The Best Teacher is Forever and second, The Best Classroom Has No Walls.]

Some of my best teaching moments with my kids have taken place spontaneously. They simply weren’t the kind of lessons I could plan in advance. They were sparked by questions that children asked me in the laundry room or in the car, at the grocery store or the park.

Isn’t it an honor the way your child looks to you as the one with all the answers? A privilege to be the one who guides him through the early years – the ones filled with so many questions and so much eagerness to learn? And even when we don’t know the answers, to set an example of humble curiosity as we model using resources (books and computers) until we find the knowledge that we seek.

As mothers of preschoolers, the special significance of such moments can get lost in the other things that tug at our attention: laundry to be folded, groceries to be put away, lunch to be made. You may not truly appreciate how much your child is learning or could be learning from you as you go about your daily routine.

When you think outside the box in which our society currently defines where and how and by whom education is delivered, you will begin to understand that education is not something that begins at one certain hour and ends at another. It is taking place continuously as the child – whom Maria Montessori characterized as having an “absorbent mind” – soaks up knowledge like a sponge.

Our current dominant model of education treats the child as an empty vessel whom professional teachers in buildings called schools can fill up with knowledge at scheduled times. But this model shows no regard for how God designed human beings.

If you’re the mother of a preschooler – no matter what educational option you plan for your child in the future – why settle for this stunted educational model so early on? For during these preschool years you have so a tremendous opportunity – and all the time in the world (well, in between laundry and groceries and lunches) – to begin your child’s education with much more sensitivity to the way in which God created his mind and learning capacities.

Here, one particular word has a story to tell. The word education is derived from the Latin root educare which means “to rear or to bring up.” Educare can be traced to the Latin root words, e and ducere which together mean “to pull out” or “to lead forth.” A true education is less about drilling information into the child, and more about leading. Which sounds a lot like the process God had in mind from the beginning.

Perhaps you’re just beginning to catch a glimmer of that part of the special role God intended for you as a mother. As you grow in confidence, you will find that you are much more of a teacher than you might have ever imagined and that you can fulfill that role for your preschooler not only with the specific ideas in this book, but also by the lessons you teach throughout the day – from housework and meal preparation to the songs you sing and the words you speak while driving the car.

You will probably find, as I have, that there’s nothing like having an eager learner – or better yet, a whole bunch of them! – to bring out the teacher in me. As Florence Littauer says, her kids knew that “Where two or more were gathered, there Mother would give a sermon.”
And that goes 24/7! Love,

The Best Teacher is Forever

By Contributing Mama Writer: Barbara Curtis

Barbara is a seasoned homeschooling mommy of 12 (yes, twelve blessings), now a grandmother of ten, and a happily married wife. Barbara is a “revert”, she was baptized Catholic then Evangelical for many years and has come back to our beautiful Faith! Barbara and her family are a ” Family-First kind of family.”

It’s that time of year when some of you may be wondering about preschool. There’s so much cultural hype and social pressure – with many states actually considering mandatory preschool – that even moms who love having their kids at home wonder if they’re doing the right thing.

Mothers who could be encouraged to find fulfillment in a very fulfilling calling – after all, isn’t that why people go into teaching?- are instead made to feel inadequate and second-best. It’s disappointing to see a nation denigrate the role of motherhood and to see individual mothers lose confidence in themselves.

Helping to restore that confidence is what my writing is all about. I believe in the power of mothers to launch their children into a lifetime love of learning – as well as good character and strong values. By translating practices from my Montessori teacher training into a philosophy along with specific strategies and activities for the home, I hope to encourage, equip and empower moms so you never feel that you “have” to send your children to preschool for them to have the best.

Believe me, the best is you – especially when you understand a few basic principles that will revolutionize your motherhood and help you find the joy in each day with your children.

Over the next four days, I’m going to run four parts from my book Mommy, Teach Me!: Preparing Your Preschool Child for a Lifetime of Learning. Taken from an introductory chapter “Why Your Preschooler Can Thrive at Home,” these show why learning at home in the preschool years is the best choice of all:

The Best Teacher is Forever

For several years, we’ve enjoyed the special gift of a family of sparrows each spring. In spite of the hustle and bustle and comings and goings of our larger-than-life family, two birds have prepared to welcome the next generation by building a nest right over a lamppost hanging from our garage.

The cycle is fascinating as the eggs are laid and hatched and then Mama and Papa Bird feed their babies until they’re strong enough to fly. The process almost seems over before it’s begun.

And that’s true throughout the animal kingdom, as relatively little time is required for babies to reach adulthood. Animals are born with drives which compel them toward the behavior appropriate to their species: how to hide from enemies, build nests, protect, feed, and care for their young, finally to teach them to run or to fly.

Compare human infants, who take almost a year to walk independently to horses that walk and run within minutes of birth. In the world of animals, the young are helpless for only the briefest period and their own development is governed by instinct. All their instinctual behaviors would be released even if they were kept in a solitary condition.

Not so with humans. We don’t have many instincts. We have potentials which can only be released if certain requirements are met within our environment. Unlike animals, human infants are completely dependent on their parents for many, many years.

Could it be that God had a plan in mind?

I believe so. Throughout centuries and over a wide range of cultures, parents have been their children’s primary teachers in the early years and sometimes longer. Which leads me to believe that since every child has the potential to learn, every parent has the potential to teach.

If this sounds like a radical idea today, it’s only because we’ve established a very compartmentalized model of education which includes the idea that only professionals truly know how to teach.

On the contrary, I believe that any parent with a desire to teach can learn to do it and do it well. So while the not-so-new “news” that the first six years hold the greatest learning potential may cause some parents to send their kids to preschool, there is another, far better alternative – and that is to learn how to be a good teacher yourself.

Just as we moms learned how to care for and feed our babies, we can learn how to care for and feed the developmental needs of our young children. Once you know these “secrets” you will be confident that you are the best teacher your child will ever have.

Because you are, you know. You are the one God created to be fully tuned into your children, to understand their strengths and weaknesses, to love them unconditionally and to be there forever.

No preschool teacher can lay claim to that. A preschool teacher will have numerous other kids to concern herself with. Her time with your child is limited to a certain number of hours per day – how deeply can she understand each individual then? And when the preschool years are over, your child will have to say goodbye and move on. All that part of your child’s life invested in relationship with another temporary stand-in for you.

Many readers of my blog have asked me about preschool. The bottom line for me – as a former teacher who enjoyed the adoration of numerous preschoolers year after year – is this: Why send your child off to fall in love with his teacher when he can learn at home and continue focusing his love and building his trust in you?

The longer the time you share and the greater your investment in these years, the stronger the bond will be when your children are grown. Take it from a 36-year veteran mother who’s launched half her children into adulthood: In a world where teens are facing such great challenges , this bond can make a world of difference in your child’s future.

Notes on the pictures: As I was writing Mommy, Teach Me! and Mommy, Teach Me to Read! I asked readers who’d used my ideas to submit pictures for the books. The picture below is from Aggie, who’d read my very first book Small Beginnings when it was published in 1997 and had incorporated many of my ideas into her three daughters’ preschool years. Here she is, showing her daughter an exercise I described in both Small Beginnings and Mommy, Teach Me! which encourages order, eye-hand coordination, pincer grasp, and concentration.

And here is her daughter, showing the results of her mom’s efforts:

For more information, see my website Mommy, Teach Me! or click on Categories, then Montessori, Preschoolers or Homeschool above. Come back tomorrow for Part Two.

Love,

I’ve been following Barbara’s blog for the past couple of weeks and she has brought some perspective to my homeschooling journey. It has been a breath of fresh air for me in moments when I felt so overwhelmed with decisions for my children. To quote her, “that’s what readers can look for from me – something simple, something real, and something with hope in it.” For more neat ideas by this Blogging Mama, please visit her Homeschooling journey: Mommy Life.