Send kids to school or keep them home? A lot of parents are making some very difficult decisions right now. It’s not an easy decision to make. If parents send their children, there’s risks involved and many states are cutting their budgets, eliminating art, music and “specials” like foreign language and band. Keeping kids at home to educate them remotely means one or both parents must juggle educating their child and work.
Know what? I’m rowing your boat. I’m trying to make some of the same decisions. Never the less, I am sure of a few things. First, a child’s first language is singing. Music, no matter if a child is home or at school, should have access to fun, stimulating music education. Through music, kids learn about the world around them. They learn about history. They learn to express themselves.
Learning to speak another language is to learn how another group of people sees and expresses themselves in a world different from our own. In 2020, that sounds like a pretty good idea. Foreign language also makes a child’s understanding of English even stronger. Learning another language at an early age means it is far more likely to stick with them through life.
Lastly, those quirky little readers… Millions of kids have learned to read with tiny reader books. One set in particular recently had one of my students’ siblings crying. She said the pictures were scary. Her older brother agreed. He remembered them. He shuddered at the thought. It got me thinking about super simple yet colorful picture reader books with large print to invite young children into the world of reading. I thought about all those word families I’ve practiced with students and my own kids. That thought turned into some scribbles (quite literally) which turned into some laughing with my family which became Mim’s Monsters. I hope they make you laugh, too.