What should we be teaching our 4-year-olds?
First time mom without good support or role models. I don’t want my 4 year old to fall behind.
What should we be teaching? Hard skills. I know we should be reinforcing the soft skills like emotional regulation, cooperation, kindness, creativity, imaginative play. Should my kid be reading right now? She has known the alphabet for a while and can count to 100. We read her books as much as possible and try to spell out words. I have a Montessori wooden block spelling words toy, but she’s not super interested. She is very strong willed and I think has demand avoidance so can’t just sit down and do readiness work if she doesn’t want to.
Any advice for starting reading? Any play-based ideas? Or any other hard skills? She’ll be in universal pre K in the fall and has been in daycare her whole life (but they do these awful worksheets basically just tracing letters and coloring pictures).