I realized when my girls were tiny that the conventional wisdom of teaching preschoolers in 5-15 minute segments didn't work for them. Even as toddlers they liked to dig in more, and felt frustrated at being ripped away from an activity (educational or otherwise) just when they were starting to become engrossed by it.
On most things we naturally fell into a pattern of investing larger chunks of time on each subject. For some reason I didn't apply the principle to my eldest daughter's piano time until my husband woke me up. The teacher had suggested that for her young age (3 or 4 at the time) we just do 5-10 minutes a few times a day, so I went with that. She was frustrated and seemed to not be progressing until one day Ken said, "Why not let her focus on piano like she does reading, or anything else you teach her through the day?" The light went on! I let her spend more time in one sitting and her progress increased immediately.
I came upon an article recently (Click here to go to the Paul Graham article) that put the different work styles in a corporate perspective as it pertains to managers, and "makers" such as programmers, writers, and other professionals. The managers need only find the right sized time slot to fit in a meeting, "makers" can have an entire day disrupted by a meeting because it chops up the flow of their work. I'm guessing that many homeschool moms function in "manager" mode while the scholars are in "maker mode". Of course some of us are a crazy mix all around.
I'm a "maker" when working on projects, but my need for organization and the complexity of things I oversee require some of the "manager" view to fit it all in. I compromise by scheduling in large chunks of free time in which the children (and I) can immerse ourselves in tasks that we can't get into in little 15 minute segments through the day. I also found that having the older girls meet with me for school on alternating days gives me more time to focus in a nice block with each child and gives them larger focus periods to work on assignments on their non-meeting days. When I tried to meet with every child every day it made me feel like a ping-pong ball bouncing from person to person.
How do you view time? In small slots or in project flows? How do your children view time when working through the day? If you and your children (perhaps because of your different job descriptions) view it differently, how do you balance the needs of the manager with those of the "maker"?
Domestic Chaos Tamer and Homeschool Mom of Five, Dell writes about home, heart and hearth.
