Mike Smith:
Author and mom Barbara Curtis joins us this week to talk about homeschooling a preschooler. Barbara, a lot of development takes place in children during the preschool years. Can you elaborate on this for us?

Barbara Curtis:
Well thanks, Mike. It’s so true! Children’s minds are like sponges—they just absorb everything around them, which is why a child raised in a bilingual home will always know two languages better than someone who takes four years of high school French. And that’s because God designed children to learn and he built into them sensitive periods when they’ll be most open to learning. So if the right cues are in the environment and if the adult in the environment understands how to connect the child with the material that they need to learn, then that learning will take place in a really joyful and wonderful way.

Sometimes we just don’t realize when a child is ready to learn. Like when a 3-year-old picks up a broom and starts to sweep the floor, our first impulse is to say, “No, you’re too young to do that!” No, the child is old enough to learn how to sweep the floor. The thing is that we need to see it through the child’s eyes to see how to connect them with the task of sweeping the floor and make it possible for them and those are the answers that I have in my book for parents who want to learn.

Mike:
It’s also amazing to consider how children are developing in these early years! Thanks for telling us about this today, Barbara. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.