Education plan for children on low budget
Short Summary: I prepared an education plan for my 6 years old daughter. Low budget, which last all year long and carefully selected based on the most motivational factors.
So previously a year ago I wrote about how a non native English speaking family taught a 3 years old English. Now, 3 years later in the 1st grade my daughter had a chance to teach her class English under the supervision of her teacher. We prepared tasks and a teaching schedule home and they did it.
The cost for all these events can vary from 0 Euros and the limit is the sky. For 12 months this plan cost cca 300 Euros.
My wife bought a chores and we filled in with tasks which are sort of pleasant to work with. Let's take a look at it together.
German: Not me nor my wife speak really good German. We learnt it, but we are Chinese and English speakers on the first hand. However, 4-5 words German sentences are not challange to create but what sentences? As our daughter speaks English on her 6 years old level, we decided to link German to English. To show our kid that the 2 languages have tons of similarities. Open up, and find these similarities and moreover to be able to detect these.
"Gib mir einen Kuss." --> "Give me a kiss."
"Das Wetter ist gut." --> "The weather is good." and so on. Preferably, we only use words in the sentences which are similar to English. Schiff - ship, Hund - hound and so on.
Cost: Free of charge
Piano: Well, the Covid, the damn Covid locked us up, and to ease the lockdown, we bought an electronic piano. My wife plays like a piano grandmaster, but for the electronic piano, I bought an application: SimplyPiano. My wife helped out with the kiddo, when she had issues, but she basically learnt playing piano from this app. I can highly recommend it to anyone. Engaging tool, and if it was engaging a 5 years old, then it knows its job.
Cost: 120 Euros / 12 months
Codemonkey: Sooo great, coding with arrows, and blocks. Absolute fantastic, how they nailed the whole setup of building up a critical thining for little ones. My kid now loves it, she is 6, before it was just too hard for her. Now, she is working with Codemonkey just every day. Little time she invests, but no need to burn out or use up all your fuel at once in the beginning.
Cost: 75 Euros / 12 months
Meditation: We find a pleasant place with good mojo at home, sit in lotus position, and meditate a few minutes, as long as it is possible and pleasant. How we do this? We guided our daughter to close eyes, and imagine a pleasant place and walk around it. See clear the place, visualize herself in the vision.
Walk from home to school, or in her favourite playhouse .. somewhere where she knows well and she likes to be.
Cost: Free of charge
Mathematics: Well, it is my job home, the mathematics teaching. I have lots of help though. Numberblocks from BBC. Then counting everything, from stairs, to minutes and seconds till Ma arrives home from work. Then bringing real life examples:
"Honey, if we have a garden which every side is 8 meters long, how big is the surface of the garden? Meter by meter is a squere meter. Let's go out and walk it off in the mud? Right? Pa knew it is a great idea, despite the resistance of mom.. So honey we can grow 2 kilograms of peas on each squere meter, so if we grow only peas in the garden, how many kilograms we going to have? And if we cook peas soup, and from 1 kilo of peas we can make 5 times of peas soup, let's calculate how many portions we could prepare. This anyone can do, and after the 3rd 4th time of planning soups and dishes, counting basic surface of any of our neighbours garden is easy as pie.
However, I found and bought a membership for Umimematiku.cz, which gives her more home work which I could ever create by myself. Yes, in bedtime we count, while having lunch, we count. She is the new Count.
领英推荐
Cost: 100 Euros / 12 months
Karate: self defence recieves utmost importance in my world. I would teach her throwing knieves, and shooting gun. (First, I have to learn it as well, and it is not for a little kid yet.) But for now karate is fun, ninjas are fun, karate is great teacher of desciplines. If the training is not happening in real life, on Youtube you can find endless Karate teaching channels.
Cost: Free of charge till 100 Euros / half year
Chinese characters: Chinese characters are building up a entirely different way of thinking. Will be her advantage later, but knowing that the keystrokes for "drawing" the characters will add to her development not just letting her know that other people not using our alphabet, but they have their own writing system opens her focus up for the bigger part of the world. Not now, but in a couple of years it will be very easy to her to learn Chinese if this will be her desire. Well, parents can speak it still to some extend. Why not? If my dear reader does not speak Chinese, I would still recommend to buy online some workbooks for Chinese characters, you can also buy invisible ink pen, when you write the character and later the writing disappear, so you can fill into the textbook again your character. Or just buy a checkered notebook, as we all did 20 years ago.
Cost: few bucks
Documentary: We did finish watching on Netflix the Spotify docuseries. Before Once upon a time ... Life series for kids. If she can watch Barbie on a gloomy Sunday for 2 hours (yes, it is also happening) then steal 1 episode from Barbie and convert it to watching Documentary. Cooking, Baking, Welding, Business, Nature ... Netflix pays off the invested money.
Cost: Netflix subscription
Slippers and getting clothes on: is the next one: we are really bad with these topics, haha
Call grandparents: yes, call them, ask them how are they. Important as anything else.
Cooking: is an everyday project in our household. The kid needs to know that food is fun, an opportunity to create relationships, good way top save money and results delicious things.
Computer usage: For now clicking keys on computer's keyboard is the most I can achieve with her, so she got seevral years ago a Rpi 400 computer, and she plays Bunner pretty well.
Coming soon:
I am about to prepare a list for my daughter about the benefits of medical herbs. What to use for what kind of sickness. I know some stuff, my wife is fond of herbs as well. We use them first before we scream for medical help from doctors.
This table of chores is mine, my wife has her own daily demand from the kid.
Golden rule:
I must stress out that we are participating in all the events with her, she receives guidance, and support. She feels and knows that we are next to her, so she can come to us with her questions, or just to show us that she succeded in accomplishing something.