Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/from-a-parents-perspective-teaching-skills-what-why-and-how/5014668/
- Situation -Last week, while visiting me, my granddaughter spilled her orange juice. She soon discovered that she could finger-paint the floor using this fine juice puddle.
My first instinct was to yell out, "Stop!" But I now am blessed with the heart and mind of a grandmother, which makes anything she does register as perfect.
I stopped my own outcry, focused on the side-to-side swipe of her adorable little orange juice-drenched hands and realized that what I was seeing was the exact same movement needed to wipe up a spill.
My granddaughter stopped sloshing long enough to get a good grip on the paper towels I placed in her hands, then returned to her floor polishing, now transformed into spill cleanup. We were both delighted at our cleverness.
- Solution -
At age two, my granddaughter has lots of skills to learn. Opportunities to wipe up spills are abundant and the puddles hard to miss. Whether learning or teaching skills, each involves some basic steps.
What
First - what do you want to teach? Most skills are a series of smaller skills. My granddaughter needed to be able to clench the paper towels and coordinate her movements so that the towels and juice met up.
Why
Skills ...