Time to Organize

Is your craft bin getting the best of you?

Are the markers, scissors, beads, papers, glue, fusion beads, craft sticks, crayons, stickers, stamps, and McDonald’s toys getting OUT OF CONTROL?

The time has come to teach your children the life-skill of organizing:

1. Present the problem. “We are going to get new craft things for Christmas, and we need a place to put them.”
2. Make it a challenge and chance to spend time together. 
3. Ask you child to make decisions “What do I do with this?”  
4. Model organization.
5. If children struggle with organizing and the job is overwhelming, give specific jobs to do.
   For example, my daughter organized the crayons. She found all of the crayons in all of the drawers, made a to-go bag to take places, a bag to keep in the drawer and a bag to make into candles.
6. What can you use to sort things?
   Sandwich bags, snack bags, little jars, pencil bags, organizers you buy in the store or build from cardboard.
7. Make a give-away bag and a garbage bag.
8. When you get frustrated or tired, save the rest for another day. 

What other ways can I teach my children organization?

• Model organization by using shopping lists, to-do lists, and calendars.
• Give your children calendars. Highlights makes a fun kids’ picture-find calendar with stickers for special days.
• Make lists with the kids on paper of what they want to do for the day. Check off things on the list as you do them.
• Review the lunch menu for school every day to see if your kids want to take a lunch or not.
• When students start having homework calendars for school, make sure things are written down and checked off as students complete tasks. This seems obvious, but many students struggle with this undertaking.

Another article to view: 10 Ways to Organize Your Children

Ask Your Child’s Teacher

If you think you are the only one who wants your child to succeed, guess again. Your teacher, your school principal, and the state in which you live have a vested interest in the success of your child.

Do not be embarrassed if you don’t know how to do your child’s homework (even if it is 1^st  Grade). Other parents don’t know how to do it either! So be your child’s advocate and an advocate for all of those afraid to ask.

 

Over the last 20-30 years, the philosophy of teaching has changed,

• the funding of school has changed, 
• school leadership has changed,
• school accountability has changed,
• and teacher’s average knowledge and ability has changed significantly!

Also, if your child is having learning difficulties, teachers can share strategies they are teaching at school. You can reinforce these. Teachers have a life-long collection of helpful learning tools and suggestions.

Your child’s teacher has so many ideas, so much pressure, and so little time to teach what they have to teach!

More advice for parents, including free printables. At www.teachervision website.

Thinking Outside the Box

One of the great things about being a parent and not a teacher, is that you do not have to stick to the school curriculum. You can do things that are fun, creative, and help your child grow in different ways.

Idea – tooth picks connected by mini marshmallows. See who can build the tallest structure – if you want to be competitive. Allow marshmallows to dry overnight and display crafts on a dark piece of cloth.



Gumdrop Tower

Better idea – Make a Gumdrop Tower to support a candy bar.
- Use tooth picks and gum drops.
- Or instead of the tooth picks, use a bag of spaghetti.
- Give each group the same number materials to begin. See who can make the tallest tower to support a candy bar.
- This was done by teachers at a university.


Find more fun activities to keep you young people busy through the cold months of the year. These activities help grow their brains too! http://pbskids.org/zoom/printables/activities/

Helping Young Readers with Comprehension

Good readers do not just read a text. They think about it before, during and afterwards. They predict, connect vocabulary and meaning to prior knowledge, draw conclusions, see causal relationships, compare, contrast, and visualize.     Wow!

There are things you can do to start good comprehension thinking habits in young children before they can read for themselves.

Anticipate – Before reading, look at the front cover and discuss what you think the book might be about. Then if you want, peek at the pictures inside and guess the story.

Read the story. Discuss words and ideas children might not understand. Help them connect words and ideas to things they already know.

After reading, discuss what you thought the book would be about and then what it really was about.

For beginning to intermediate readers a great exercise during or after reading is to make a diagram (“graphic organizer”) of what the story is about with a circle around the main idea in the middle and spokes around it, representing supporting details.
For free graphic organizers of different types go to http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer.

Make a Book Together

It has always been my dream to write books together as a family.

One day, my 5 year-old daughter decided she wanted to make a book with me.

• She put the pages together, stapled them, put stickers on and colored in the sky.
• Then she said that it was my job to put in the words.
• I asked her what she wanted to call the book. “Zebras of Cazooby” was her reply.
• She also wanted me to write everything on the cover that a regular book has, such as the author (me) and illustrator (her).
• After it was finished, she showed the book to people, reading the words to them.

Other book making ideas have you punch holes in the paper and thread yarn through the holes.

You can use any kind of paper, cardstock, colors, stickers, glitter glue, crayons, or cut out pictures from magazines.

Other Resources:

• Make Books on your computer using Real E Writer, FREE download.
This simple program allows you to insert photos, scans and words before printing out small books.

• Order inexpensive empty books with hard covers from Barebooks.com!

More online great book making ideas: http://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/makeown.htm

A Word & Its Meaning – Put it Together with a Picture

In kindergarten, my daughter refused to read words in isolation. So I started drawing pictures around the words to give them context.

Upon looking for flashcards with pictures, teachers told me about the Bob Books. They are the only kind of reading system that incorporates words with pictures. Cheaper yet, we turned to the Dick and Jane books. These books have the sight words and pictures with enough repetition to learn the words.

How can we make learning sight words fun and effective?

Make your own pictures that go with word meanings.

In fact, have your child dream up pictures that go with word meanings – preferably with a friend! Use a white board as this takes a lot of erasing.

This is an effective learning strategy for primary, intermediate, and ESL students to connect the meanings and spellings of words.

 At the bottom of this entry is a page from Purple Cows & Potato Chips (1995) which gives more examples of how words can be turned into pictures.

One More Spelling Helper

http://www.spellingcity.com/ is a fun place to work with spelling words.

At the end of a long day, you and your child might not feel like doing formal spelling exercises. Instead, you can enter and save the word lists on Spelling City. The server automatically creates context sentences for the words and generates games.

Your child can learn new words, test themselves online, play hang mouse, matching games, cross-word puzzles, word finds and make printable worksheets.

Free!

Spelling Strategies 2 & 3

Strategy 2: Make Observations about the Words.

Make flashcards of the words. Write on the flashcard. Outline the word to emphasis the tall letters and short letters.

Poor spelling has to do with poor visual memory of words. So the outlining process reinforces visual memory. For example, the word “corn” has no tall letters or letters that hang low. This will help one to remember that it starts with a c and not a k.


Strategy 3: Constant Time Delay

Constant time delay gives students time to think of the correct answer. If they do not know the correct answer, then the teacher or parent shows them the correct word after a few seconds. This way, students form only correct connections in the brain. This is called “errorless learning.” This is better than forming incorrect connections with guesses, having to break those connections and then forming the correct one.
Clear step by step directions

Spelling Strategies

Good News! There are things you can do to help your students learn spelling words!


Strategy 1: Cover, Copy, Compare

This strategy is a good way for students to work by themselves on their words. They cover the word they want to spell, write it, and then compare it to the original.

Small white boards and markers are good for this, because students usually enjoy white-boards more than pens and paper. In fact, you could save the white board just for this purpose to keep it special.

Also there are many sites online that will make worksheets of your list of words.

Click here for more directions.

Rewards – A Great Way to Encourage Learning and Desired Behavior

STEP 1: Make a list of every kind of reward you can think of.
After making the list, check with your child to see if there are any rewards you missed.
Which ones are the most important?

Example List: computer time, movie time, ice-cream or other food, story time, special activity, sitting in the front seat instead of the back, stickers on a chart that lead to larger rewards, surprises, a treasure box, surprise gifts, special necklace or shirt, McDonald's or Chucky Cheese's, play time with a friend.
In the end, almost everything good can turn into rewards.

STEP 2: Think of a behavior you want to encourage. For example, you can reward a week of good behavior at school, reading every day, or a great score on a spelling test.

STEP 3: Find appropriate means to record data where your child can see it. For example, my kids really like the Ladybug chart for tracking their reading time each day. The following web link has more chart ideas and how to use them.

Vary Rewards: If people (not just young people) receive the same reward for too long, that reward loses effectiveness.

IDEA: Build rewards into ordinary plans.
- When my children are watching a movie and need to get ready for bed, I stop the movie early, have them brush their teeth in a timely manner, and watch a little more movie as a reward.
- After the kids pick out their clothes for the next day of school, they go out and play.
- If the kids brush their teeth on their own, they can use a pink fluoride mouth rinse.
- Once in a while, a treasure from a treasure box encourages good going-to-bed behavior. But children do not get the treasure until they are all ready for school with hair brushed and shoes on the following day.

Even I find it easier to accomplish my tasks when looking forward to positive rewards.

Math and Money

Money is a great way to teach young people math concepts like adding, subtracting, multiplying, decimals and then dividing and fractions. Everyone needs to learn how to use money. Children are naturally interested in money so that learning does not seem like work.

The first step is teaching kids what money stands for.
- Rewards: With my kids, we’ll be riding in the car or in the middle of our routine. I will hold up a nickel and say, “What is this?” They answer. Then I say, “How much is it worth?” If they answer correctly, then they can keep the nickel, dime or quarter.
- If the kids find a pile of change somewhere, they might be able to keep it or some of it if they can count it correctly. If this is too frustrating, then they can count it with an adult.

Change game for learning: One can play games by rolling a die and earning pennies. Then as the pennies add up, trade for a nickel or a dime. When players get 10 dimes, they trade for a dollar.

o This is the base for our primary number system (Base 10).

After children learn what money stands for, they can start learning how to write money (decimals) and later move towards learning fractions (one tenth, one quarter of 100 = .25 or a quarter).

Note about online games: There are many free games online for math, like http://www.apples4theteacher.com/java/counting/money.html. However, children learn better when they can actually move coins around and have personal interaction. Online games can be one reward for learning concepts or working for 10 minutes, counting money.

More online game ideas:
- http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/games/mad_money_flash.html
- http://www.netrover.com/~kingskid/Math/math.htm
- http://www.moneyinstructor.com/games.asp

Have fun!

Reading Lyrics to Songs

Find your child’s favorite song lyrics, the one they don’t know all the words to.

My kids Love Hannah Montana songs.
Break the song into parts, make words larger if that helps.

Go over lyrics with child together
Give lyrics to child to go over alone and with friends.
Have child read it to you periodically
Offer a reward for learning the song
This helps with fluency and is motivated by your own child's interests.

Example: Hoedown-Throwdown by Miley Cyrus

I found this song to be too long for my first and second grader to try to learn. Additional idea - break the song down into segments. Cut the words out and paste them onto blank pages. Have students draw pictures to go with each song segment (or download pictures online). In so doing, they can make their own book - and remake as many times as they want.

Right now my girls are really annoying me with the song from Taylor Swift, "You Belong to Me." They sing "typical" like "ticable" and get many words wrong. So this little book-making exercise might help with reading and word correction. To be really cool, they have to sing it right.

Reading - in 10 minutes a day

After teaching my 5-year old how to read in 10-minutes per day, I became a firm believer in the need for parents to spend quality time with their children reading. Even parents that cannot read themselves can make a huge impact on their child’s life in this way.

- Choose a book on an appropriate reading level.
- Set a timer for 10 minutes
- No stress!
- Give the child time to look at the pictures and make observations as you go.
- Pictures add context for beginning readers to add meaning to their words.
- Remember that one has to review a word at least 7 times to get it into the working memory. Just because you tell them what the word is one time does not mean that they will remember it.
- If your child really struggles, offer to read together in unison. This is called “Paired Reading,” a research proven technique for helping children learn to read very quickly.
- Idea: make flashcards of words your child struggles with. Include pictures on the flashcards. (5-cards/time is good.) Review the cards now and then or in the car.
- Repeat readings, allowing child more independence

Some parents think that school is going to teach their child how to read, so they do not need to put the effort in. However, most students receiving special education services do not have parents who help them with their homework. This gives children the message that reading is not that important after all.