Using Those Teachable Moments

One of my favorite benefits of homeschooling has been all those little teachable moments that come along in the course of every day. Learning can happen at any time, and it can be fun!  The important thing is to watch out for those moments, because learning happens naturally in those times.

A while back I went grocery shopping with Bear Bear. Super Stuffy had decided that he wanted to stay home, so Bear Bear and I had some girl time.

She is still small enough to fit into the basket of the cart so she decided to ride. Normally I use a grocery app to make my grocery lists, but this time I just decided to do it the old fashioned way and wrote it out on a piece of paper. I wanted to keep track of the amount of money that I was spending in my cart, so I did some old fashioned math.

At this time, Bear Bear was still practicing her addition and subtraction facts but had not gotten into multiple digit problems. I listed all of the prices on my grocery list and started adding them up when Bear Bear said, “Let me do it.” This created a ready made teachable moment so I grabbed onto it with both hands.

I handed over the price list to her and she started adding. When she got to the carrying, we had a math lesson right in the middle of the aisle at Walmart. We had worked on place values for awhile, so teaching her carrying was relatively easy. As she worked, she talked it through out loud to herself. I couldn’t have been happier. This math lesson fulfilled a purpose in real life.   Bear Bear wanted to learn it, and she did. Real life lessons are the best lessons.

How many moments in your day are teachable moments? Keep your eyes open, because they can happen anywhere at any time.