Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother

Last weekend I read Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother. I flew through this book because of my interest in the subject. After reading, I have a few opinions of my own: 1) Amy Chua takes things too far by rejecting her daughter’s birthday card because “it wasn’t good enough,” calling her daughter “trash,” and criticizing her daughters at every turn. However, there were some take aways from this book. She worked with her daughters at a young age drilling rote memorization of multiplication, site words, etc. and had them practicing piano/violin for 4-5 hours a day. Also, on top of her job as a full-time Yale Law professor, she oversaw these tutoring sessions/piano & violin lessons HERSELF. No matter how crazy you think she is, that is very impressive. So, I was thinking about how I am raising my son, and what I might take away from this. Currently, I’ve moved to working with Brady 1 hour everyday (weekends included) on spelling, writing, reading, and math. Obviously this is nowhere near what her requirements are, but I do believe it will be beneficial to receive this 1 on 1 time learning with his mom, while still having the afternoon to learn through free play While I began trying rote memorization and drilling letters with him, I remembered my former research in early literacy and that it must be enjoyable if it’s going to stick in the long run. Since then, I’ve tried to come up with fun activities that encourage him to learn while being more than rote memorization. For example, we practiced site words by writing them on a large sheet of paper. Then I gave Brady a car and asked him to “park it” on a certain word like “the.” He would race his car around the table, and with some prompting, or not, would eventually find the word and place his car on top. He loved this. I also went out and bought stamps with every letter of the alphabet and different colored ink pads. I made these books where I would spell the word, have a place where he could stamp the word, and then a place where he would write it. He LOVED finding all the different letters and stamping them to form words like “CAT’ “DOG” and “BAT” in his book. After they were stamped he would practice writing them while sounding the word out. I’m continuing to find more ways to teach my four year old. Most of my time has been spent researching math and science ideas for preschoolers because I’m clueless. Some helpful articles I have read this week :

preschool math

preschool math 2

preschool science

Also, I’ve watched some videos surrounding the controversy and conversations started by Amy Chua’s book. The book was met with much criticism: \ interview