He or She?
In writing out the lessons we have found it hard to address your children as them or they so we decided to alternate between he and she between lessons. We want to acknowledge that either sex can and should be exposed to a variety of activities and although from here on out the activities will be referring to one gender or the other, both genders are thought of for all of the activities.
Your Child's Interests May Help With the Learning Process
When you're watching your child, take note of what she is interested in. It will give you an indication of your child's interests and may give you ideas of ways you can adapt future lessons.
Movement and Learning
There is scientific evidence that movement assists in learning and repetitive movement using the whole body, for instance: running, climbing, walking also balances chemicals in the brain that calm behavior and raises your child's self-esteem and self-worth. The factors that make us move also make us think. Some exercise can produce the right chemical interactions within a person to give him or her a stronger, healthier and happier brain. A brain that is happy is able to think, remember and to learn better.
Tracking Left to Right
Lining up objects from left to right will prepare your child for learning to read. Tracking is when her eyes move from left to right when reading words and numbers. Showing your child through modeling will reinforce the skill and make going from left to right seem only natural.
Ways to Give Time to Think
If your child needs time to ponder, go put a load of wash in, read a book, or unobtrusively walk away to give him an opportunity to explore his thoughts at his own pace. It doesn't mean you don't care, it just means you trust him to work out the answer the best that he can and that you are still available if he needs you.
Watch Your Child for Frustration
Watch for frustration levels of your child. Don't push too hard to reach a desired response if your child doesn't understand.
Try Not to Interfere with the Learning Process
As a parent, it is difficult to sit back and watch your child when she doesn't understand something, give her time to explore the concept in her own way.
Have your child share what she has learned with others. Being able to share a new skill and to demonstrate it will help it become more concrete in her brain.
Your Child is Watching You for Subtle Clues
Your child will learn from your actions that you don't think he can figure it out and will watch for a clue from you. Give him time to figure it out.
Ownership of Learning
Giving your child the opportunity to take ownership for his own learning is very powerful.
Help Your Child to be Independent
When your child is unsure of something, it is important that you don't give any hints, a nod of the head or encouragement that will sway her choice. She will come to rely on you for direction before making decisions. It is hard to watch your child struggle, even for a moment, but in the long run, she will thank you. You want your child to grow up independent and able to make choices. It starts now. Having her problem solve and make choices based on her experience is vital.
Empower Your Child With Choices
When children have the opportunity to make choices, they feel empowered in their own learning.
Resist Drawing for Your Child
Resist drawing for your child, it would be easier, but she will come away thinking subconsciously that even you don't trust that she can make it look right. Having your child pleased with her work is important for her development.
Rote
Children learn to repeat words and numbers through memorization. This kind of learning is called rote. Rote memorization is how children begin to remember patterns and it is normal but they will still need to understand the concept in order to master it. The goal is for your child to have a firm understanding of the concepts behind the words and numbers. So if your child can say the alphabet but misses a few or can count up to ten but doesn't know that three means 3 items, then she is just repeating the information and she doesn't really have an understanding of it yet.
Your Child's View Point May Be Different Than Yours, Ask Questions
Sometimes children see things from a slightly different point of view than an adult which is developmentally appropriate. They will continue to gain understanding in many things and shouldn't be expected to master the skill yet. Ask your child to say what he is seeing, it might be completely different than what you expect. I remember working with a child and on the top of the dice was six dots but he said three, when I asked where he saw three, I discovered he was looking at the side of the dice, not the top. Don't automatically say he's wrong, you may find out he is looking at something else or he has chosen a different name for the item that you are looking at. For example: mug for jug, glasses for spectacles or butterfly for insect.
Give Positive Reinforcement
Praise your child when she is doing what you ask with a simple, "That's it!" Let her know when she's got the idea, it is a positive way to continue getting the right response.
Brainstorming With Your Child
When brainstorming with your child, remember that the idea is to gather as many ideas as possible. The important thing with brainstorming is that every idea is valid and none should be dismissed immediately, even if it seems silly. Give your child an opportunity to think about the goal and let her make suggestions. Be open to new ideas, this will help with the thinking process. If your child gets the feeling that her ideas don't matter, you won't get the response that you are going for.
Talk through the problem, then write down every idea your child comes up with. Writing down all the ideas your child comes up with helps your child develop an understanding that you value her input. It shows you value her ideas and it will demonstrate to her to value other's ideas.
After your child has made some suggestions, you can add some too! When it comes time to test the choices, let your child make the decisions on which one to try and have her try them out. You will be empowering your child on how to make informed decisions.
Children come up with the best ideas and they can be very innovative when they have opportunities to express themselves in a non-threatening atmosphere. All ideas will help lead towards a new way of thinking.
Allow Learning, Watch That You Don't Give the Answer Away
When you are asking your child a question, don't inadvertently give the answer away. That tells the child, subtly that you don't think he can figure it out himself. Allowing your child to learn from the mistakes and triumphs are skills that he will use for the rest of his life.
Use Open End Question
Whenever possible use open-ended questions, questions that require more than a one word answer, like "How does this work?", "What is happening in the picture?" or "Why do you think that will happen?".
Also "Show me." is a good beginning, when I child doesn't know where to start telling you what she is doing. Once you get in the habit of using open-ended questions, it becomes much easier.
Learning is On-going
The assessment process is on-going. Your child is learning and growing every day. Although she may not have a skill on one day, with practice and re-teaching the skill in different ways, your child will amaze you.
You Know Your Child Best
As a parent, you know your child better than anyone else and he is very receptive to learning and wants to do the best he can for you.
Think About When It Is the Right Time to Give Advice
As your child is going through the lessons, watch for her understanding of concepts. Is there something she may have missed? Sometimes pointing it out at the moment is perfect, but other times, it pays to wait. As you work with your child, you'll see if she is really into an activity, it may not be the time to get in a long discussion about why she was wrong about something. No matter how well intended it may be, it could turn your child off.
Watch Your Child for Clues of Understanding
Watching your child as he goes through the lessons, you'll get a feeling if he needs to work more with something or that he seems to brighten up when he was working on a certain concept or when you went on a field trip. There will be million little moments for you to file away in your head that will show you directly and indirectly when your child understands a concept and when he doesn't.
Give Your Child Choices
Giving choices to your child allows your child to feel good about him/herself. It shows your child that you trust him/her to make decisions. Your child will take ownership of the project if he/she feels that he/she had a hand in making it.
Do the Same Lesson in a Variety of Ways
Watching your child as she goes through the lessons, you'll get a feeling if she needs to work on one concept or another. Since you are introducing her to a lot of concepts, many you will revisit in other ways. She should have more opportunities to explore the concept if she understood it or not.
Playing Will Increase the Learning
Each child needs to learn at his own pace. Sometimes that means he needs to "play" with something before he understands it. Remember: play is work for children.
Exploration
Whenever you begin a lesson with something new, let your child explore the items first. Otherwise her attention will be focused on the new item, not on the lesson.
Put It Away For Now
If your child is unable to do an activity, put it away for now. It's important not to make a big deal about it. With more exposure and more practice, she will be able to do the skill soon.
One-to-One Correspondence
To help your child obtain an understanding of numbers it is important to have lots of opportunities for your child to match one object to another. This is called one-to-one correspondence and it is vital for your child to master this concept before he goes any further with number skills.
Science Tip: Wafting
Have your child gently wave her hand over the open bottle of spice so the air is directed towards her nose, this way she doesn't inhale the spices directly into her nose. This is called "wafting".
Remember To Be Silly Sometimes
Being silly for young children goes a long way. They love it! And they remember better if you play with the idea that you are trying to convey to them. The sillier the better.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Children need to process information at least 6 times until it becomes "hard-wired" in the brain. So repeat yourself, it's okay!
Estimate or Guess
Estimating or making a guess is a skill children develop with practice. Being able to estimate helps children develop a sense of numbers and how they relate to the world around them. It also shows a mastery of many skills from number sense to measuring. Make estimating a game; it isn't important that they estimate the exact number. What you are striving for is for the estimated number to get closer in time. It will no longer just be a guess, it will be a reasonable, logical number based on their experience and understanding of numbers. So make it fun, do it often and encourage the process. Every step is a step closer to mastery.
When we did our dinosaur foot print, we had Sam estimate the number of his foot prints that would fit inside the tyrannosaurus rex foot print. He said "10" but once we started doing it, he could see it was going to be more than 10 so he revised it. That was great – he saw that his thinking was off but it didn't throw him, he just made an adjustment.
So if your child's guesses are way off, let him or her go with it and change the number if she or he wants. The number isn't important, nor is being correct. The importance is the thinking involved and getting close to the actual number over time.
Art Tip: Project Area
You may want to create a project area in your house for your daughter or son to find everything s/he'll need to build: scissors, glue sticks, markers, stapler, string, ribbon, yarn, cereal boxes or toilet roll tubes.
Clean Up
Be sure to explain to your daughter/son that s/he can make anything s/he would like but s/he must clean up the area after s/he is done. It's important to make it your child's responsibility to clean up after s/he is done from the very beginning.
S/he'll appreciate being able to "work" in an organized and clean environment.
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