Intentional Education

Astrid Labrie

The Intentional Education Podcast challenges the current one size fits all approach to education. Here you’ll learn frameworks and tools to empower you to build your own child led schooling. I’m Astrid, former school director now boy mama that shares all things alternative education, Montessori, and non traditional schooling. Each episode you’ll leave with more tools to support your children in their lifelong journey of learning.

Episodes

  1. 05/12/2023

    Basics on Teaching your Kids How to Read

    Kids will start showing an interest in independently reading at varying stages of their development and for some kids they start as early as age 3 while others may not show an interest until later on in their development (8 or 9). There's nothing wrong with this despite what we may see in mainstream common core standards and social media. Some kids are simply more interested in gross motor activities, creating art, music, whatever it may be, but eventually they will start peaking an interest and when they are ready you will already have some simple strategies to be able to use with them. Also the very best thing that you can do if your child isn't showing interest, is keep introducing it with no strings attached, the more you try and push a kiddo who isn't interested, the more they are just going to hate reading in general.   Whenever we are learning anything new, this can be for us as adults, kids, any human what we are actually doing is strengthening the neurons in our brain to create pathways that will reinforce what we know and what we are learning. Which is why if you can ever tie a new skill into something that your kiddo already knows, this can be a great way to not only reinforce previous knowledge but also make it faster to incorporate new knowledge.   When kiddos are starting to read, I always break this down into 2 sets of categories. One category being words that can be sounded out phonetically like cat /c/ /a/ /t/ cat. The other category are words that don't generally follow a phonemic pattern and words that we simply have to memorize or memorize its pattern. For example- the word you, phonetically it is not prononuced by seperating each letter so these are words that we need to keep practicing aka memorizing until that neural pathway is strong enough that we can instantly recognize it. These are most commonly known as sight words, and there are so many sight word lists out there that you can find online. There isn't one that's better than another in my opinion, my advice here would be to pick one list and stick with it. Sight Word lists:  Fry Sight Words Dolch Sight Words   Multiple ways to incorporate this into your everyday: Do a word search around the house, in the books you have in the house Use flashcards and place them around the house and have them go on a word hunt Write a sentence they can read on a piece of paper and have them draw a picture of the sentence.  Make it fun! Reading doesn't have to be done in a vacuum. Incorporate it into as many different activities as you can so that you can building the connection in their brain and strengthening their confidence along with it.   I hope this helps give you a starting point to introduce reading. It doesn't have to be scary or overwhelming I promise! Let me know what you thought of this week's episode @intentionaleducationpodcast.

    Basics on Teaching your Kids How to Read
  2. 04/09/2023

    Brief Overview of Alternative Education Theory

    Overview of the different types of Education Theory Maria Montessori aka Montessori Education shares an importance on child-led learning teachers become guides within that learning, observing heir students and creating activities that can be self initiated & independent Often in multi-age classrooms Because of the high importance on child-led learning, in these kinds of environments you will see everything at child level, minimal decor to promote concentration, tools such as number lines or alphabet cards are made to be utilized by individual students. STEM or STEAM STEAM is the successor of STEM Stands for Science Technology Engineering & Math, the A in STEAM is for the Arts Can be a very hands-on approach to learning Guiding kids through the scientific process of hypothesis, possible solutions, testing, and then evaluating the results Focuses on creating relevance to the world around them Promotes problem solving and critical thinking skills Arts Integration Kennedy center for the Performing defines arts integration as "an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject and meets evolving objectives in both."  This was the foundation for the charter school I taught in and was school director in Basically what it does is utilize various forms of art so visual, auditory, movement, dance, theatre to help teach and show that you understand the traditional parts of education Nature Based Education aka Forest Schooling Using the natural environment to teach academic, social, & emotional skills Heavy focus on cooperation & team work Hands-on approach to learning utilizing the natural environment to problem solve, explore, Take safe risks which can lead to increased self confidence and better sense of self. For example, students might taught how to whittle sticks with real knives, understanding how to start a fire and practicing as a group. They are This one is newer to the United States but is really taking a lot of traction bc of all the benefits that is has to our children.

    Brief Overview of Alternative Education Theory

About

The Intentional Education Podcast challenges the current one size fits all approach to education. Here you’ll learn frameworks and tools to empower you to build your own child led schooling. I’m Astrid, former school director now boy mama that shares all things alternative education, Montessori, and non traditional schooling. Each episode you’ll leave with more tools to support your children in their lifelong journey of learning.