Nature teaches us many profound things.
For example, little sprouts and new plants need rich, nutrient-filled soil.
They need care and water, and they need light. Our little sprouts, our precious children that we have
been given charge of, need safe, nutrient-filled environments more than ever before.
Childhood is a unique time, such a precious time. Where a child's foundation is laid
will set the course of his or her life. How will the child come to view the world?
What will end up mattering the most to them? Will the child gain the gift
of seeing beauty and wonder everywhere they go? Will the child love books and learning?
Homeschooling can offer a place for children to thrive, a place where strong family relationships,
faith, and character are nurtured, safeguarded, and strengthened. Still, you wonder, can I really
do it with a baby or toddler? So, I homeschooled with toddlers and a non-stop fussy baby for years,
and now those toddlers and those babies are grown, and their childhood is gone forever.
And the reason I'm creating this video is to tell you that it is not just possible to homeschool
with babies and toddlers, it is so worth it! I am left with precious memories and relationships,
and children with beautiful minds and hearts, and I am forever a changed person myself. It
was worth every sacrifice required. I'd like to offer you some suggestions for
homeschooling with babies and toddlers from my own experience. So, first, I just want to say
that the season of homeschooling with babies and toddlers will look different than other
seasons of your homeschool. It's okay not to do it all during every season of your homeschool,
and it's okay to have a really different type of schedule during certain seasons of homeschooling.
You will also be amazed at what you can accomplish, especially with a curriculum
like The Good and the Beautiful, in a short amount of time. Also, remember that in grades 4 and above
our math and language arts curriculum can be largely self-guided by the child, freeing up an
incredible amount of time for you as a parent. I feel like it's crucial to use an open-and-go
curriculum that has short lesson sections the child can do independently just like we have built
into The Good and the Beautiful curriculum. If you are finding that you just can't get it all done,
pray over direction. Different people do different things. For example, someone might be prompted to
ask a grandmother to sit with the baby one hour a day so that you can give an undivided one hour a
day to your kids, one-on-one. Or someone might hire a responsible homeschooling teenager as
a mother's helper, or try homeschooling with another family for a part of the week so you
and the other mother can swap teaching time or watching the toddlers. Another person might be
prompted to reduce the amount of lessons they try to accomplish each day, and another person might
be prompted to have the father homeschool for one hour each night. There are really so many options,
and God will guide you with specific and creative options if you ask and seek His guidance.
So let's shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about toddlers and screens. It is so easy to just
give your toddler a tablet or a phone to keep them occupied. But what is easy in the short term will
likely make your life a whole lot harder in the long run. Parents sometimes feel that if
it is an educational screen time it's okay, but screens can actually hurt a child's developing
brain. Let me just read one paragraph from an article that we have linked In the description.
A pediatrician, Dr. Johnson, wrote in an article: "Children can exhibit irritability, anxiety,
depression, excessive tantrums, and impairments at school, home, or with peers. Some children
even experience short-term memory problems and cognitive decline. Many pediatric clinicians
attribute excessive screen time and inadequate outdoor time to rising rates of ADHD and even
oppositional defiant disorder. The developing child's brain gets wired to crave constant
stimulation and the child has difficulty coping when the stimulation is withheld."
So there is conflicting research about this subject. I suggest studying it on your own if
you're interested, but something to consider is the type of content that you are giving
your child on screens. Listening to a wholesome, beautiful storybook while looking at the still
pictures has a much different impact on a child's brain than watching bright, flashy, fast-moving
images with fast-moving music. So I suggest not giving screens to babies ever and for toddlers,
monitoring the time spent on screens and choosing gentle content that doesn't have constant,
flashy action which over stimulates. And it is also fine to never give a tablet to a toddler.
We created The Good and the Beautiful Kids Channel on YouTube to create safe, uplifting,
gentle, nourishing content in addition to many engaging, educational songs and videos. We
highly recommend the Exercise Adventures series as well. These exercise videos take children on
an imaginative journey using movement, storytelling, music, and dance. We hope
you'll take advantage of our gentle, sweet media content that will help your child from
a young age develop a taste for truly good and beautiful music, images, stories, and content.
Some parents don't use any screens for toddlers, and if that is the case for you,
please continue with confidence. If you are a parent who is looking for small amounts
of gentle media for toddlers, consider using our Kids Channel at the times during homeschool when
your children need your attention. Also consider using wholesome, uplifting audiobooks. Listening
to audiobooks can help develop vocabulary and accelerated understanding of language. It's
also an opportunity to share good messages and to expand a child's learning about the world.
Here's another tip about homeschooling with young children. Whenever possible,
I love involving them in the lesson, and this works best during science or history lessons,
but it can work with other subjects too. Toddlers want to see everything. It's how they learn. Let
them sit on your lap and involve them too. When possible, give your toddler a job. For example,
you can ask him or her to point to pictures as you read a story, or you can have your toddler hold
up images for the other children to see. You can also give your toddler their own student journal
in history or science to scribble or color in or give them a coloring book. To make it special,
you could have a box of different types of crayons and colored pencils, and each day your child could
choose a set. Another way to make homeschooling easier with babies and toddlers is something
simple, but it can make a big difference. It's this: set your toddler up to have
the best likelihood for good behavior while you homeschool. Make sure they are not hungry or tired
right as you are starting a child's lesson. If you really need the toddler to behave during science,
for example, make their snack time right at the beginning of science. Also, I suggest not going
too long without giving toddlers one-on-one attention. Even just pausing for 60 seconds to
give your toddler your complete attention can help them get their needs met and then they're happy to
keep doing self-directed play. Another small tip has to do with creating a smart schedule. It's
easy to want to get everyone's individual lessons going right away in the morning, but mornings with
littles might be smoother using family-style learning. Many toddlers still take naps most
days. If you're blessed to have a toddler who naps, then this is your golden school time,
and you can use this quieter time of the day for one-on-one instruction with your older children.
One thing that I did for my children when I was homeschooling with babies and toddlers was to
create a daily chart of all the self-directed things they needed to do such as handwriting,
reading, chores, cleaning rooms, piano practice, and listening to an audiobook. Despite what was
going on with babies or toddlers, they could work on those things independently. Then,
when the baby was happy or was napping, I would pull my children in for those things
that I needed to do with them according to when it worked for me. So I didn't have a schedule of
when we were going to do things, I just knew the things I needed to get done with them and
I would do my part with them when it was most convenient. Also, during times of newborns or
sick babies or potty training toddlers, we would actually drop history or science for a season,
or just do one lesson a week in those subjects if we could fit it in. And I didn't feel bad for it.
I knew that it was a temporary season and often we would make up the lessons in the summer when
we weren't doing as much language arts or math. Also, older siblings can be a big help with chores
around the home and also keeping little ones busy while you work with your child. And it's good for
them to help with those responsibilities. Teaching older children to value younger
siblings and to prioritize their needs is also learning. Lastly, be flexible. If you have a day
where the baby is teething and crying all day, adjust accordingly. Do what you can,
even if that is just having your children work on handwriting pages and listening to audiobooks.
Or even take a day completely off here and there, or relax and go to the park, or visit Grandma. We
believe in strong academics and intentional teaching at The Good and the Beautiful,
but we also believe in flexibility in seasons of homeschool. I just wish I could go to lunch
with every single one of you homeschooling mothers with babies and toddlers and just encourage you,
and tell you it is worth it. I think about great historical figures in our past who persisted
through trials and ended up shaping the world, and it makes me think of the nobility and greatness of
what you parents are doing in persisting forward through difficulties in order to raise your
precious children in truth and light. It is God's work and that is why I know that He will help you.