Christine Said:

My son does not want to learn stuff for preschool should I let him just play or make him learn?

We Answered:

Children learn best by playing. You can turn anything you want him to learn into a fun game experience. Then he will enjoy learning and remember a happy time with mom. Definitely do not
force him to "learn" he may then be completely turned off to learning and you. All of us develop self defense mechanisms. If he feels he is displeasing you by not sitting down to learn he may try to protect himself from displeasing you by avoiding the issue all together. In my sixteen years as a preschool teacher our curriculum made every concept of learning fun. It is hard for children his age to sit still for very long so you must be concise and creative in your lessons never more than fifteen minutes at a time with a sit down activity. Very young children learn best by doing. Playing games
comes naturally to them. So create alphabet games or number games. Say to him lets play a game
see how many of these blocks or spoons or apples (anything) you can count with me. Then say now
I will help you if you want lets see how many you can count by yourself. This is just an example but
I hope you get my drift. Motor skills are paramount in learning to read and learn other skills so by all
means let him exercise as much as possible and develop his jumping, running, skipping and climbing skills. Visual learning is easy to do at home. Label everything in your house. door,window,table, chair, desk, bed etc. This can be done with masking tape and a marker in lower caseletters or you can print little cards and stick them up. Then do not make a big deal over them.Just mention casually that this is how we write the name of the object. He will get exposure to sight words without sitting down and drilling on them. The same way with cereal box names, let
him "read" the names on food items like Cheerios, Kix, Rice Krispies, etc. just casually not as a lesson. He can read signs as you drive along. Like familiar stores Macy's, Sears, Target, Wal Mart,
etc. There are so many ways to expose him to learning without making him sit and learn. Be creative
you can do it.Moms are the first teachers of all children. Just by being your sweet,loving self you are teaching him how to love others. Every object in the world has a shape. It is either square,round,rectangular, diamond shaped etc. so pointing out the shape of things as you go along is another easy way to teach the concept of shapes. Which is a precursor to reading. Because every letter has a shape. A is triangular, as is W,M,Y and so forth. Lower case letters are formed from circles and lines. So learning O is very helpful. Learning I is very helpful. I could go on and on but I just realized I am on this answer the question thing and I am getting carried away. I love the way little children are so eager to explore their world. Use their enthusiasm to launch a lifelong love of exploring. Then you will never have to worry about if or how he is soaking it all in. Later when he is older things may change slightly but should never change too much. Life and learning has to be fun or else what are we doing on the earth. I believe we are here to grow,learn and have a blast helping others.

Mario Said:

How do you teach a kid there abc's?

We Answered:

make it fun!!!!! I bought a $10 sponge set of letters and set them down....tell your little one to run and stand on the letter a.....etc etc. You could also just cut them out of construction paper and do a few at a time, get him to arrange them in order. My son and I play all sorts of games, tracing letters on his back (it tickles) and he has to guess what letter I wrote. We played abc game in bed, first think of a name and something the could eat that starts with same letter. Example abby eats apples. My two year old I have started making the letters in play doe and see if she gets it. Singing the song,abc....my daughter sings some form of it, it makes us laugh. My son is 5 just turned.

I want to say its great that you care and are doing this for him. This shows you have a good heart. Good luck and pat your self on the back.