Learn about Teaching with the Community Helper for T

Our Community Helper for the Letter T is Teacher! An obvious choice because even homeschooled kids have teachers at church, at co-ops, and their own parents! Most kids know what a teacher doesn't I wanted them to experience teaching. One morning I gave them the assignment of teaching Eli something, they got to choose what. They chose numbers which was probably a good choice because I knew he already knew several of those.

They started with flash cards and the chalkboard, showing him numbers and telling him what they were. He would repeat some of them, but in a couple minutes he ran off. They tried again, same result.

And then I hear, "ugggg.....I can't teach him anything; he won't pay attention!"

Honestly this was quite amusing for me because I teach them and frequently feel like they don't pay attention either! So I told them they needed to find something he was interested in. We all agreed that he was interested in cars, so they needed to come up with something dealing with cars.

We came up with a plan for him to sort cars into colors and label each group with the appropriate number card. Bria ran off to find cars for the groups (1 of one color, 2 of another, 3 of yet another and so on). Nadia too it upon herself to make the cards. She wrote the number and even drew the appropriate number of cars to help him out.

Once everything was gathered we brought Eli in and he was eager to do the activity. He easily grouped the cars by color as I expected.

I was surprised that as Nadia handed his card and told him the number he immediately placed it with the right group! I guess he knew more about numbers and counting then we thought!

In the end the girls were pleased with their teaching. Eli knew the information and paid attention for the entire lesson. I think they got to understand some of the difficulty in teaching too! So here is too all the Teachers that get to deal with kids that won't pay attention; we appreciate you!