Miya’s schoolwork

Miya’s schooling situation is very different from Mulan’s at that age.

With Mulan, we started workbooks just before she turned four, and we worked on them for maybe about ten or so minutes a couple of times each week.  She didn’t finish her first workbook until she was four years and two months.

In contrast, Miya finished her first two workbooks on Monday.  She is three years and nine months.

The reason Miya is speeding through these workbooks so fast is that she likes to do school just as often as Mulan does.  This means that she does it every day, for maybe half an hour or so at a time.  (Mulan now does about an hour each day.)

All of this meant that last week I had to go back to the Guangzhou Book Centre bookshop to pick up more book supplies.  (I went on my own and had a wonderful relaxing time there!)  These are the books I got for Miya:

I also discovered that I had stored away in my future resources slash pressie cupboard this book, which I gave to her, too:

Each day this week Miya has been doing a couple of pages from each of these four books … and loving it.  Every morning, she nags at me to start their “school time”.

Is all this extra school time bookwork helping speed along Miya’s learning?

I doubt it.

For one thing, it is all swings and roundabouts.  Gains in one area are offset by losses in other areas.  Soon enough, things will more than likely even up.

For example, one other big difference between Mulan and Miya at that age was that I read to Mulan a lot.  When it was just Mulan and me together, we would often snuggle up together during the day with a reading book (or ten).  It was often an hour or two every day.  That just doesn’t happen with Miya.  In general, the only time I get to read to Miya each day is at night for about ten minutes just before bed.  So, Miya is far less advanced with story reading than Mulan was.  Which means that she is less familiar with letters and words.  She doesn’t yet know how to recite her ABCs (Mulan learnt from Dr Seuss).  And she gets bored quicker with longer stories.

Another big difference is that Miya has had a lot more free time playing with Mulan and other big kids.  This has resulted in her gaining skills and knowledge that would have been completely outside Mulan’s world at that age.  (I am a firm believer that children’s free play is not merely frivolous and fun; it is an essential part of how they learn [blog entry lost].)

And still another big difference is due to personality.  Miya has a much more spatial/sporty/engineering/physical mindset.  She loves screwdrivers and hammers, and likes to “fix” things.  She also likes sitting down and colouring in (which Mulan didn’t).  I suspect it is this background that has given her an advantage when holding her pencil, and has made her more advanced with her writing than Mulan was at that age.

I also doubt our workbook sessions are helping speed along her learning because I have read studies showing that starting children early with schooling does not make them more advanced than their slower-starting peers later on.  The education system in countries where children start school at seven is just as (or more) successful as those where children start at five (or younger).

So, I have no illusions that Miya’s more frequent workbook sessions will make her more advanced.

What we do suits Miya, and it suits our family lifestyle.  But I’m sure it is not better than what we did with Mulan.  (Or worse, for that matter!)

My next post (when I get around to it) will be on Mulan’s current schoolwork.