By Michelle Berriman
Lance and Michelle Berriman homeschool their children, Kate and Luke, at home in Beachlands.
My husband and I are woken at 6.15 am by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The kids have been into role playing lately, so we wonder who we are going to ‘be’ this morning.
“Chirp chirp, good morning” comes the chorus from our two ‘baby birds’.
Now we know the answer to ‘who’ we are this morning. We wipe the sleep from our eyes and get into character.
“Chirp Chirp to you too. Would the baby birds like some worms for breakfast?” chirps Mummy Bird.
“No, we are the mummy and daddy birds” is the response from the kids. Oh, got it wrong again… And so it goes on till everyone has had enough of this game.
“Ven a comar desayuno.” And we go down for breakfast . No, they are not interested in being served up worms for breakfast.
“ ¿Quieres cereal o pan tostado? ”
“¿Que quieres para tomar?”
The replies come thick and fast, “Cereal and le leche por favor. Gracias.”
“Da nada.”
I guess that is the Spanish lesson done for the day. As the kids hop down from breakfast they decide they are going to play in their rooms, and it’s not long before we are called in to get involved in the next “game”. At the moment their favourite games are practising letters and sounds and starting to sound out words. We struggle to keep up as the kids bring us their sandpaper letters and want to trace their fingers over them or their Letterland books.
“Tell us about Red Robot, no I mean I will tell you about Red Robot”, to doing the letter puzzle and wanting to point out all the things they can find with the letter of the moment. Then out come the pencils and drawing paper. Whew, what a whirlwind!
Soon enough (we all know the short attention span of three year olds) they wander off and find it more fun to play a game on their own that doesn’t involve us. So far we have done our drama and role playing to help the kids make sense of the world around them, we have done our Spanish lesson and practised the letters and sounds.
As I sit down to my breakfast about 8.30am I can start to hear the sounds of bikes and pushchairs as mums walk their kids to school. I can only hope they have had such a productive and fun start to their day.
