In October this year, I brought our 3 years old Alyson to her 1st Sunday school for age group 3-4 years old. Children in this age group are supposed to be independent and parents can leave them in the class while they attend the main service. However for new children in this group, parents can hang around in the class (at the back, not participating with child) so that they can slowly adjust to being in the new class.
She was quite nervous and had separation anxiety at first and clung onto me not letting me go anywhere. So I sat next to her throughout the class, gently telling her how other children enjoys the class, dance and sing and do their crafts.
When it was crafts time, I sat behind her and slowly guide her to do the activity for the day. At first, she happily doodles away on a coloring paper. And then she got distracted by the many color pencils there. She started playing with the color pencils there.
So what is a mother supposed to do when her child gets distracted?
I decided to use the opportunity to teach her. Don't let any moment slipped away and waste a good teaching moment.
I saw her arranging the color pencils by the color group. So I taught her the colors. I also counted with her the number of color pencils in each group. She can count up to 10 so far so it was pretty fun for her to be counting instead of coloring at that moment. As for the coloring activity, she didn't continue on but she did continue to sort the pencils by its color group.
In this situation, she gets to continue playing while I get to include some teachable moments for her. Win - win?
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