Back to the Basics - Katie Krabel

Every year when I get a new class of Preschoolers, I go back to the beginning.  My amazing aides and I spend the first few days focusing on teaching them the basics: how to say, “Good morning,” how to sit in your chair, how to raise your hand, how to hold a pencil, how to say the letters in the alphabet and the sounds they make, and (most importantly) how not to yell “Miss Katie!” at the top of your lungs every time you need something. 

After a few days, the phrases we teach them run through my head like a broken record, even after school is finished. “Stand up!” “Sit down!” “Hands in your lap!” “A says a-a-a.” It feels like we say them hundreds of times, but it still takes a few weeks before my students really start to catch on. Learning new subjects and ideas in a new language is hard!

 While it can become discouraging when it seems like we aren’t making progress, I remind myself that the things I’m teaching them – simple though they may be – are a crucial foundation for everything else they will learn in their school years.

If they never learn how to raise their hands when they want to ask or answer a question, they’ll just shout it out – which has a negative effect on teacher sanity levels and the classroom atmosphere.

If they never learn how to write correctly, they’ll struggle as written work becomes more difficult each year.

If they never learn that Letter A says “a-a-a”, they won’t be able to read.

With much hard work on the parts of both teachers and students, they do learn. And by the time they are in the upper classes at Sonlight, these things have become automatic; so natural to them that they don’t even have to think about it.

But while all of this is necessary for a good education, there is something else of far greater importance that we are teaching our kids.

We are teaching them about Jesus. From learning the story of the Bible and singing songs in Preschool, to digging in to what it really means to live like Jesus in the High School classes. And I hope and pray that through what they are taught at Sonlight and through the examples of our teachers, their knowledge of God and confidence in the love He has for them will be even deeper than their knowledge of reading, science or math.