Real Learning Counts
Mixed-Age Chaos
A few weeks ago, both of my children were dysregulated.
My 3.5-year-old and 14-month-old were fighting, overwhelmed, and needing support — not more direction.
Instead of pushing through or trying to “fix” the behaviour, I focused on regulation first.
We sat together on the couch in a calm, safe space and simply watched the world outside our window. We waited. We noticed. Bees. Butterflies.
Slowly, excitement replaced tension.
From there, I followed their interest.
We moved like bees and butterflies — high and low, fast and slow.
We crawled under the table, climbed on the couch.
I added music — Flight of the Bumblebee — and we changed our movement with the pace, feeling the busyness of a bee.
My 3-year-old became curious.
“How do bees eat?”
So we looked it up together. We watched videos. We learned about pollen, honey, and yes — bees vomiting honey (which was a big hit).
This flowed into small world play, role play, laughter, songs, counting to five, and finally black and yellow painting — still listening to the same music.
None of this was planned.
It started with dysregulation.
It was guided by interest.
And it resulted in connection, learning, movement, language, maths, science, creativity, and joy.
This is what learning can look like at home.
Not forced.
Not scheduled.
But deeply meaningful.
This is the lens behind everything I create at Grounded Learning Co.
These are the moments we often don’t think ‘count’ — but they do.