Learning

Over the past few weeks Lisa and I have been reading books about learning as Tryggvi is getting on to that age (he will be 5 this year!) and Saga will not be left behind...
What is fun is what we are learning about ourselves and what we have yet to learn. and how we need to start with us and show the kids that learning never stops. before you know it they will be on board with learning. If we do not start with us then the kids will not see learning as life long. We both want them to have a love of learning like ours where we never want to stop.. the catch for us is not lean not to push them but to guide them (first and foremost by showing the example).
As we have started to spend more time in our books (both fun reading and learning) we are seeing that the kids are wanting to spend more and more time looking at books and wanting us to read to them all the time!! this is wonderful!
the next step for us is to start a routine (gag) so that the kids know what part of the day we are on and what they can expect.. and this age mostly play and being read to, with chores and other needed things tossed in.
I know as we learn more and more we will post more on this as we are still in the learning process also.
One of the largest challenges we have with that is not us but others. Those that want the kids to be reading (or close) by now.. this makes our challenge helping them to understand why we are doing things the way we are. We are not the best at trying to explain it.. but we try. Tryggvi is not ready to read, but going over the alphabet once is ok, maybe twice if he is interested.  He is still having issues with simple numbers and some sounds, so we try to help him with those when he wants to (and a little other times). He is not SLOW or behind he is being a little boy just like he should. He does not need to focus on things for a long time yet! His brain is just starting to make some of the connections needed to focus for more than a few seconds. We need to make the most of each teaching opportunity. This means learning to stop what we are doing when that moment arrives. not always easy to say the least. but the kind of education we want our kids to have is one that is better than the one we got at that age (not trying to say ours was bad, but that we want to build on it).
Over all I think that we are well on our way to teaching leaders and thinkers.. I look forward to continuing to helping them develop.