Making it fun

This morning I spent a throughly enjoyable 35 minutes working with my daughter on her sight words and numeracy skills. As we began to creep towards 40 minutes of focused work I pulled the pin as I could begin to sense that she was not having fun with her learning. If you want to promote life long love of learning with kids you have to remember the lyric from the late great Kenny Roger’s song The Gambler :

“You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run”

Far too often children are forced to follow a path of educational development that is driven by the needs of an overworked teacher trying to meet the demands of the curriculum and not the learning styles/capabilities of their students. You have to know when to hold their focus and get them to push through. This foster grit and perseverance. That being said you also have to know when you have pushed them far enough and it is time to fold’em moving onto something different. Sometimes your prescience as a teacher/parent can become a crutch and the best thing you can do is walk away, letting them figure things out for themselves. Exercise is crucial to the thinking process. When the kids have been sitting too long, it’s time to get them up for a run. Knock those cobwebs loose and get the blood flowing.

The educational process needs to be endlessly adaptable and flexible. The future is not fixed, neither should be how we learn.