3 Important Things to Teach Kids before Sending Them to a Preschool


With Axelle
Monday, April 2nd, 2018

 

I have been teaching Axelle a set of ‘essential’ concepts of starting her life outside the home. And I have seen these concepts to beautifully work in crucial situations when she starts to go to school at 2.5 years + 2 months old. Therefore, it is important to educate each word below before sending them to their first school, like a preschool or ‘orinijib’ in Korean.

Teach your kids these words along with its values as soon as the kid shows an ability to digest a little chunk of information given to an adult:

  1. Monster. Generalize this Monster word into whatever things that are bad and ugly, like bacteria, getting sick, nasal mucus, etc. Just use this Monster word in daily life. If there is a kid with the ‘drooling nose’, I will show Axelle, “hey Axelle look, that kid has some ‘monster’ coming out from her nose!” “You don’t want any monster in your nose right?” and she would normally answer “No!” then I continue with my message by saying “…that is why it is important to clean our nose, also teeth, and ears..”Next time she saw a dog on the street with eye discharge, she directly said to me “Mama look, that dog has some monsters on his eyes!” Now that she gets the idea fully, it is time to expand this Monster word into hygiene concerns. Like why we need to wash our hands. Why we need to change our clothes before sleeping. Why we need to poop and pee on a potty, and so on.
  1. Trust. Define it through ‘Trust me’ and ‘Trust you’ on the daily occasion. I make sure Axelle knows how to use it in her daily conversation with me. I often give her a simple task like: “Axelle, please put on your socks because ‘I trust you’ can do it yourself, because you are a big girl now!”. This Trust word is going to be needed to expand later to 2 powerful concepts of ‘Honesty’ and ‘Promise’. When she was 20 months, I started to let her hold an egg. A raw egg with shell intact. I asked her to help me when I baked some cakes. Not only that we exercise the word ‘trust’, but we also put that ‘trust’ word into a real case study. Axelle knows that I trust her so much. Putting ‘trust’ at an early age is important to shape her final character. Read Axelle’s story about Honesty and Promise, here.
  1. Johnny Song. “Johnny Johnny / Yes papa / Eating Sugar? / No papa / Telling lies? / No papa / Open your mouth / Ha Ha Ha! /” Yes this Johnny Song is important to teach. It may seem that this song is teaching our kids to tell a lie. But, as parents, we can outsmart this song handsomely by making this ‘Johnny’ guy falls under a ‘bad’ character label. So, when Axelle is in the situation to tell a lie, I simply ask her: “Are you Johnny Johnny, Axelle?” She directly answers: “Oh no, I am not!”. And I replied “of course You are not! Axelle is a very kind and honest person and Mama love you very much!”. Thanks to this Johnny song.

Once Axelle has fully understood those three things above, our parenting job is to expand and upgrade its values in digestible concepts that she will get it from an outside-home life. Axelle is ready to go to school to collect more real case study on her own. Samuel and I will only need to supervise these ‘essential’ concepts are being put in the right place every single time. See how Axelle and I put these concepts from an accident at her school to her real-life case study: Link

How about my Momma-friends out there, do you have some value words that you have taught your kids about? Mind sharing me?

Image Credits: Axelle

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