Its your own journey!

Progress looks different to every individual, who will also have a personal weakness they need to work on developing. 

No individual is ever finished, and will have reached the end of their learning journey. It's the journey of life, to learn, to grow, as long as your heart is beating. We are forever students, as well as teachers, from the minute we are born. We simply focus on different aspects of education at different stages of life. Not everyone will reach the same point, certainly not at the same time. The words 'unique' and 'individual' exist for a reason.  

Here was Xander at a year old. His early years education was very focused at this stage. He could not sit up without being strapped into this chair. 

He 'should' have been independently sitting, building towers, crawling and perhaps even walking like his sister's at that age. That's what the guidebooks say. This was not his path.

He made those milestones but in time for his second birthday. There was a chance he might not have reached them and he would have been in a wheelchair or have a walker for life. 

His job here was to work on strengthening his core muscles, and grow accustomed to being able to view the world from a sitting position rather than from on his back. His left hand was grasping bricks  and playing, his right mainly rested at this stage. 

He thought he was such a big boy playing with his sisters. He felt like he was a part of their world.

He had his own personal objectives, and they were very focused at this time. It was to be another six months before he had reached the next stage, of a walker. He independently walked just before his second birthday. 

The contents and objectives of early years  education is quite widespread, but there's no need to panic and try and teach it all at once. There's cognitive, fine motor, gross motor, and life skills to work towards, with dozens of objectives within each field which can appear overwhelming when lumped together. You may feel you do not have the time, which is where my favourite five minute nugget of learning comes into play. A few minutes in play over years, mount up. 

There's a time and a place, within a right time frame for each child. You can certainly have a list and work towards achieving it by official school age. It's meant to be a journey across their first five years minimum, it's not a sprint. 

You can sow seeds gently, share the knowledge, build upon ideas and concepts. There will be times of tuned in focus, the background environment can still be set up to facilitate learning however, out of focus, yet still be present. Exposing the learning points in the wild without commentary, to be discovered organically by your children, can be so fruitful. If you remain tuned in to their cues the knowledge pathway blossoms naturally.