[slingmamaof4]

My advice would be to keep it fun. My 4-yo dd has taught herself phonics and is starting to read on her own...surprised me with that!!!! And I just started doing fun games with her like go fish. I take construction paper and cut it into 12 or 16 "cards" and she picks words she wants to learn and I write them on the cards. She loves to play the card game and it is a fun way for her to keep her busy mind engaged without much structure. Also the other day at the park she was digging a hole and asked me to dig with her. We pretended we were archaeologists and we found a pyramid, an ancient Egyptian gold coin, a diamond, and a sphinx. We had lots of fun. It was a great moment together. It was really nice later to hear her telling my dh "Mommy and I were archaeologists at the park and we found......and we found a sphinx. Do you know what a sphinx is daddy? It is a statue of a lion, but it has the man's face. Maybe it was the face of the pharaoh...." It was just a game we played, but she learned a little about ancient Egypt.

There are lots of ways of teaching in a fun and still probelm-posing, critical thinking way without too much structure and it is great to be able to design your child's education specifically for them.