During that time you’re looking for ways to casually model concepts and vocabulary. For example:

Young child bringing you something: I need four more pieces to make this work. Will you bring me four pieces?  I don’t want any yellow ones, though…. Oh good, give me 2 of them first. Now the other two. Hmmm, 2 and 2 makes how many? You count…. You think 4?  Let’s count them again to see for sure, 1,2,3,4. Yes, you’re right. 

Older child helping to bake: Now we need one cup of flour. Use this one cup. See — here’s where it says “1 cup” on the handle of the big one. Now look: Here the recipe says we need half a cup of sugar — here’s where it says 1/2 cup on the handle of this cup that’s a little smaller.  So fill that half cup for me. (And you could go on to point out half plus half makes a one whole cup — or just let it drop and go that far another time.)

Older child later feeding the pets: Time to feed Bella. She gets a half cup of her food. Find the one that says 1/2 on the handle and fill it up. And Amber gets one cup — that’s two times as much as Bella, cuz she’s 2 times as big.  (Maybe you now want to mention half plus half makes one whole cup. Or not — depending on how they seem to be taking it in. You might even try showing an older child how to add fractions, by writing out what they’ve done while measuring flour for cookies. You could walk them through what they did, as you write: 1/2 + 1/2 = 2/2 = 1  Or you might even have them pour four 1/4 cups of water into one large measuring cup to discover what 1/4+ 1/4  +1/4 + 1/4  = 4/4 = 1 cup really means and why you add the numbers on top and then reduce the 4/4 down to one cup.  (Or maybe you don’t go on that far, but I might try it to see what happens and whether they’re old enough to really get it….) 

Use a Light touch With teaching 

The possibilities are endless, once you think of your own routines in this way. You’re not planning to teach addition, fractions, or everything about the Food Pyramid  — you’re just finding ways to point things out to them, modeling as you go. Always alert for how the’re responding. And if they seem to be confused, you may try it another way — or just give it up for now. 

You’ll often be casually teaching things that might seem rather advanced. And at other times, they’ll be very basic. You don’t do this all the time, it’s not a constant stream of “teaching” with everything you do. You just look for opportunities as you keep it light and interesting. 

When you decide to “show them” something, you just do it casually and see what happens. Sometimes it’s too much for them to grasp, so you let it go. But other times, they’ll surprise you. And as you experiment, recall that “learning by doing” is far better than trying to learn from a text book.

As long as you’re not asking them to preform by rote memory something they don’t understand, you won’t be doing any harm. But we do need to be careful we’re not we’re not putting them under pressure to perform — to just pick up vocabulary that sounds right, when actually they don’t understand what they’re saying.