My two kids, aged 5 and 3, are not in kindergarten. My oldest girl, K, have only had one year of kindergarten experience. I’ve been trying to homeschool them and have accumulated a lot of books from booksales. However, I seem to fail in 2 areas:

1. Consistency. Not having a fixed time for them to sit and learn. My teaching times are often interfered with household work and my mood.
2. Patience. I get flustered and frustrated easily when the children put in half hearted efforts and start whining. It doesn’t bug me if they can’t do the work. But it bugs me big time when they get negative and don’t even try.

With the arrival of the new baby, I thought my homeschooling efforts would be even more miserable. However, it’s been okay and I’ve been better at consistently having it at a fixed time — after lunch. At the moment, this is what we are learning:

K – English (Reading and spelling), Maths, Science, Bahasa Malaysia (Malay)
D – English (Reading and writing), Maths

I’ve thought of putting a kitchen timer for each subject (unfortunately, I’m without one at the moment as the kids broke mine). This is because I tend to stop teaching only when boredom sets in. That is not a very good strategy. With a timer, I would be able to divide my time between the subjects equally, e.g. half an hour for each subject. Plus, I’m sure the kids would respond better too when they know Mommy will not go on forever and will stop at a fixed time.

What problems and questions have you encountered with teaching your child at home? Or what solutions have you found?

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