She is brilliant and scary!
Our little one has been teaching herself to read since she was 3. While we homeschool our older children we learned long ago not to push when they are young as it backfires so we were going with a hands off approach. Despite us though our little one used mostly the iPad and Kindle Fires and various apps to teach herself to read. She loves the reading eggs apps and so many others. Because of her love of learning and of all things letters we felt the need to support her in her wish to have a laptop for her 5th birthday. This might not sound responsible to some, specially those friends in the waldorf circles but you must understand that we have looked at this long and hard and have chosen to simply not get in our daughters way!
Her Doc McStuffins Themed 5th Birthday
This is a photo of our oldest and youngest. Goodness each child teaches us so much. I adore how much they all love one another and support one another. All the kids wanted to make sure this birthday was special.
We had friends over to celebrate and swim a bit. The kids love being outside and specially the pool. As this little one was born in water we have kind of made it is a tradition to swim on her birthday.
She loves all things Doc McStuffins.
My wish for her is that she keeps her stubborn determination in life to reach her dreams!
She read the title of a book the second she unwrapped it, then read the word “recycle bin” and shocked her Dad. It wasn’t hard to get him on board at that point with my plan to unschool her this kindergarten year. I think our best bet is to simply stay out of her way. Once her new laptop was up and running she thanked her father and then asked him to go away. She does this with the tablets when she is learning and with books even. She doesn’t take direction well at all and everything has to be on her terms and her interest level. I think that is just fine for her age, though honestly I wish she would let me teach her some things or at least let us “test” what she knows for our own curiosity but for now we just wait for those moments when she brings us a book and reads with us or randomly read things when we don’t expect her to or when she tries to do her older siblings homework! While it is most parents dream to have a child reading so young and learning so naturally it has come with some social struggles and so much stubborness. The scary part though is knowing we could some how take this from her, not meaning to. I don’t want to rob her of her love of learning. I don’t want to make it a battle. So we will unschool I think with her. We will set out learning opportunities and invitations and field trips for her and reassess things in 6 months to see if a new plan is needed. For now, she is 5 and thriving and we can’t really ask for more.
