Dos and Donts in teaching basics to kids

I think a lot of school expect (1) in the kindergarten and early primary years. A's school certainly seems to prefer that parents not teach anything at all at home in terms of academics this year (pre-KG). Parental involovement is encouraged in the next few years only to the extent that the kids complete homework and projects on time. Personally I go with (2) and (3) because I've been having fun learning with DS for quite a while and I cant just stop because the school is taking over So I try and read and learn for myself first about whatever he is interested in and then tell him more on the subject.
I started writing this 4 hours ago and still havent had uninterrupted time to finish! To get back: Reading - DS learnt alphabet recognition and sounds from 2 places - starfall.com and Leapfrog's fridge phonics. He did those effortlessly - I never had to teach him. That was about a year and a half ago and he does a few simple word blends when he feels like these days. I learnt the basics of phonics myself and encourage him to "read" the occassional word in a book or make a word with his magnetic letters. But I figure he will read when he's ready and I dont push him. I do read to him everyday though. If you want a phonics reading program I'll dig up the link for a really good free one I found for you.

Writing - of course he's too young and his school wont do that for another year or so. Right now he scribbles a lot on his magnetic writing toy and "writes" lists for me on paper. We play this game where he imitates the shapes/lines I draw (coloured chalk on concrete works great for this) and thats my writing readiness activity. When he shows interest in writing I would start with tracing letters on sand/flour and then later paper.

Maths - We do practical counting ie where it matters to him. Count out the Gems he wants to eat or the number of books I have to read to him etc. I think addition and subtraction can be learnt the same way initially. He also reads license plates which is a good way to recognize Arabic numbers. Perhaps an abacus would help someone your DD's age.

We have a globe at home and he is learning to identify the places his relatives and favourite animals live in (he's a major animal maniac); what its like in those places etc. We also watch a lot of Discovery channel and Animal Planet and that helps so much with natural history learning (both for him and me!).

Thats all I have time for right now. In short we dont have a set time for learning - I believe at this age (and until primary school atleast) children do better going with the flow.

V.

 

Asha - I love love love teaching - it must be obvious from my post!
Society for Quality Education: Sharing Proven Effective Practices: Remedial Programs is the free reading program. All you need to make are the flashcards (or use magnetic letters instead) and you are set. I've used it with older kids so I think for DD you need to go very very slowly and be very very patient. Pushing seems to make them resistant to learning (atleast it does with DS) so I've learnt not to seem even the slightest bit pushy or even say stuff like "Shall i teach you ___?" because the sure answer will be "No; I can do it by myself!" or "I dont want to do it". If your DD is like that then you only make a game of it and teach them without them knowing they are being taught. There's another site First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts which has great crafts/colouring pages which can be linked to your teaching. Also this one Preschool and Kindergarten Worksheets has good worksheets. My do's

- do only 10-15 minutes max of any one activity and then move on. leave the child wanting more and finish before they are bored. Also dont plan for more than 2 such activities on any given day; the rest should be free play time.
- do a little advance planning /prep for the next week. i have a folder with craft template and worksheet print-outs so we can do something at a moments notice.
- get those transparent folder/paper holders and a dry-erase marker. then you can put the worksheet into that and reuse a million times (saves a lot of paper)
- try alternating physical activities with sit-still ones so they can run around and you can get some work done too

Reading - Start with letter sounds; these are the building blocks and she needs to know them well.
- Make sure she is comfortable with lower case letters as well as caps.
- Once she can identify letter sounds easily start blending 3 letter words which are phonetic - cat,mat,rat etc.
- Do rhyming words games and also the "make a match" ones on starfall. PBS kids Between the lions (pls do search for the exact url) has many great word and sounds games - Monkey match is our fav.
- If she is comfortable with phonetically sounding out words, start introducing common sight words - the, you, me etc. (google Dolch words for a list of common words early readers should know)
- Through all this read to her and also get the early reader books and start encouraging her to read the occassional word and then more and more until she can do it on her own!

This is my approach and only a synopsis of what I'm doing with my DS; I of course need to refine it as we go along and I'm open to suggestions/corrections. Hope it helps you a little.

V.

PS - I owe Krithika (Tikka) big time for many of these tips. Thanks Krithi!

 

PPS - Dry erase marker is in the shops as whiteboard marker here.

V.

 

wow Aadhusmom you are doing an incredible job!.
" get those transparent folder/paper holders and a dry-erase marker. then you can put the worksheet into that and reuse a million times (saves a lot of paper) "
What innovative ideas.I get the dry erase boards with the alphabets on them .But this is a fantastic idea!.

I was going with (3) & (4) since DD got good reviews from teachers.
But now I feel her new school is more of playtime than academic and she forgot all the alphabets and numbers.:confused2:
I follow IXL Math for the math work.The website is a pay one but you can keep avoiding the membership and go the next page to do the exercise.
For the phonics I strongly recommend the Leapfrog DVD "LETTER factory"
You can play this to a kid as little as 2 and they will catch it up fast
and the older ones never get bored because its funny to watch the letters sing really catchy songs.

 

Asha, phonics is just breaking down a word to its sound components for us and for the children building the words from sound components. If you have a good dictionary which those symbols for sounds at home, you can do one word a day kind-a thingy.
Reading sentences is very interesting for us. K is now beginning to put together words into a sentence. But from what I notice he does that with books he knows by heart. He can identify around 100 words - yes, he learns them more as sight words though he knows the word sounds - in every context and will read them out, but not as a sentence. For eg: "Cat is drinking milk." Will be Cat - Is - Drinking - Milk. But he needs me/DH to put them together into a sentence and that makes sense to him. I think a child needs to be reading words for at least 6 months to a year before they can put together in a sentence.
Writing is a skill that will develop well over the years. K is lagging behind terribly as far as holding a pencil in the right grip goes. There is a song for that, I will see if I can find it in the mess called my desktop and mail it to you later.
K's school has also announced they do not want parents to teach, even those of us who were homeschooling :-(. But I intend doing it because it is so much more fun for us.
V, I am really happy you found some of what I post here useful. I dont want to change this into a mutual admiration society, but I do admire the way you are with Aadhu.

 

Thanks Asha and Janavi but the idea is not original - got it off a website - still thank you!

Thanks Krithi; the Abby Cadabby is a super-duper hit at home btw!

V.