Immersion

Children love repetition and immersing themselves in something new and interesting. Thanks to the miracle of the DVD player, this is easy for them to do...as long as Mommy doesn't interrupt them to do annoying things like eat and go to sleep. Yesterday was the "Little Einsteins: Firebird Rescue" day. My dd's were obsessed with it, watching it over and over and telling us all the little details in it that they found so interesting. As long as they are watching a quality program, I don't mind a couple of days or so of such immersion. I've noticed that such obsessions help them really learn the program material, and it inspires their play with new scenarios and information. I don't believe that children naturally have short attention spans; they are just much less able to pay attention to that which they find uninteresting. That's one more benefit of homeschooling in the early years: children have the time and schedule flexibility to spend long periods of time on what's interesting to them, thus learning it well!