Early Childhood Education - up to grade 3

I came across this article this morning and hope you have time to read it. Print it out and sit down with a cup of tea, or soda, or kool aid - whatever your preference, and read it.

Every year, people come to me asking what curriculum/workbooks their Kindergarteners or even 1st graders should be in. Others stress over the fact that their child is 8 and can't read yet. I am a strong advocate for early education (up to 3rd grade) being a time when the child explores and discovers his world. I don't think kindergarteners should be working out of workbooks - unless they want to. That means, they genuinely have a desire to sit down with a workbook and do the pages in it without mommy standing over them to be sure everything is right. For these early learners, get out the play dough. Better yet, let them help you make playdough. Take them on a nature walk. In this area, Codorus State Park is a wonderful place to go. For that matter, the Littlestown Community park is well suited for a nature walk. Give them wooden building blocks and see what they come up with. Be sure to take pictures along the way and put them in one of those little photo albums you can get at a local craft store for a dollar. Then have them go back and tell you about the pictures without a lot of prompting. They will get so much more out of these kinds of experiences than working on a workbook because this is real life happening. I believe that workbooks at an early age can zap the love of learning from them. (That is actually my primary reason for wanting to homeschool - so they don't loose their love of learning.)

With all that said, here is the website for the article that I hope everyone can read.
http://www.squidoo. com/learningsyst em/

There is a video on this website that I don't quite get, but the article is awesome. If any of you want to discuss the article, let me know. I love talking about stuff like this.