A Special Breakfast to Encourage Learning

I was overjoyed this morning to get a lie-in til 9.30, and even more impressed that my lad (he turned four last week) had served up his own breakfast- cereal and milk. I came down to a tidy kitchen, his dish in the right place for washing, and just a few milk drops on the table.

Knowing that he'd made an advancement in his personal capabilities due to my laziness (!) i thought i'd push it and get him to put his own socks on. He's been dressing himself for a good year and a half, but hadn't mastered socks. I'd not asked him to try for a long time, which is clearly a mistake by me as he did the job well.

This was complacency on my part; I could have asked him to try dozens of times recently, but as a busy parent I will often just do whatever needs doing to progress the day quickly. I had forgotten that young children will take four or five times as long as an adult to complete a basic task they are still mastering. This has a parity with the classroom- I have observed many teachers telling off pupils for taking five minutes to write the date and title/ learning objective in their book when actually this can be a complex procedure for a young person.

Breakfast is a similar 'rush' in our house. "Here's some biscuits/cereal/whatever kids, cmon we need to go shopping."

It stops here. Due to my new job being in a private school, I am now on the second week of a nine week summer break. I'm not going to France this summer, I have a whole curriculum to plan as well as a new car to buy, but why are we still rushing breakfast?

My boy and I grabbed a slightly out of date pack of gingerbread dough from the fridge (the sort of product I buy, chuck out a week later, and resolve never to but again) and we spent ten minutes making a 'lad and dad' pair of gingerbread men. We made them in the garden, getting us out in the sunhine for a while, and the once baking he went off to his ipad 'work games'- more on those soon- and I came here to blog.

Our day started quickly as we did something creative rather than passive and we furthered our bond beautifully. This fun start to the day also ties in wonderfully with my boys education. I'm forever asking pupils: "How can you improve your work" and they will rarely offer suggestions without me prompting them. Today, Charlie sat with his gingerbread man and said: "Next time we could put chocolate eyes, sauce for the mouth, and a belly button!" He's moving in the right way, building those advanced learner skills.

Our children shouldn't be held back by our essential laziness. Aim to do one thing a day that takes that little bit more effort, and they will grow exponentially. We want our children to grow up to be exciting and creative individuals who do great things. To achieve this, we must mentor them appropriately.

Guess what- the gingerbread men were plain, tasteless (possibly because they were out of date) and we will end up feeding them to the birds. Still, we got our value out of the pre-made mix using it as a toy!