How do I teach my child to read?

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This article is from Examiner.com and written by Tere Scott. It gives much information on teaching reading for those who are homeschooling or just trying to bolster what their children learn at school.

How do I teach my child to read?

One of the most important foundations for all learning is the ability to read. There are countless reading incentive programs to encourage the continuation of reading. But, how do you teach your child to read?

Some children learn this skill very easily and it's almost as if they teach themselves, usually at young ages as early as 3 or 4 years of age, sometimes even sooner. Others struggle slightly and pick up on it at a more expected age of between 5-7 years of age. Still others seem as if they will never learn to read and may not fully comprehend what their eyes peruse until closer to 9 years of age, sometimes even later.

So, as a homeschooling parent how do you teach your child to read?

For the rest of this article click here.
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Should toddlers and preschoolers use computers?

Here's a great article from My Swainsboro News on children and computers.

Spend some time online, and you will notice more and more websites targeted at young children. Educational groups, commercial companies, and software developers have all devoted attention to creating resources for children, including preschoolers, toddlers, and even infants.

But are these programs good for children? Should toddlers and preschoolers spend time on the computer? Computers can be valuable learning tools for young children. Unfortunately, too many programs and websites available today are not developmentally appropriate for young children.

For more of this story, click on or type the URL below: http://www.forest-blade.com/articles/2009/07/20/opinion/editorials/doc4a64b3f2590aa758960924.txt

Story Time! Children's books and the art of reading to children

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This is a great article by NMDad on how to give your children the most when you read books together.

Reading is a wonderful way to spend time with your children. Reading is part of providing a stimulating environment in which your children can learn and grow. Reading to them provides a foundation for language development, literacy, and possibly a lifelong love of books. Who doesn't want all that for their kids?

While any kind of reading is better than not reading at all, some methods are better than others. (Yes, there's more to it than the words on the page.) If you're interested in a parent's experience and advice on this topic, some of my personal favorite kids' books, and some milk and cookies* please follow me below the fold.

*Readers must provide their own milk and cookies.

For the rest of this really instructive article click here.

News Flash from AWN - July 13

The Electric Company Becomes a Daily Show on PBS Kids

Press Release from Sesame Workshop(NEW YORK, New York -- July 13, 2009) Get out your circuit breakers as THE ELECTRIC COMPANY turns into a power strip! Starting September 7th, Sesame Workshop's hit program THE ELECTRIC COMPANY, will be charging up PBS KIDS GO! with a daily dose of literacy superheroes and wily pranksters.

Six-to-nine year olds will be able to tune in every day to see Hector, Jessica, Lisa and Keith outwit their scheming neighborhood prankster-counterparts in a way that reinforces strong literacy skills and teaches kids that reading isn't just for school -- reading is cool.

"Reading and writing are critical developmental areas for children and children who are struggling with literacy skills by second grade are often at risk for never being able to catch up," said Linda Simensky, VP, Children's Programming, PBS. "By offering THE ELECTRIC COMPANY every weekday on PBS KIDS GO!, we are opening the doors for more children to explore reading and just how much fun it can be."Kids are plugged into THE ELECTRIC COMPANY making it the #1 show on PBS KIDS GO! in its block -- and the current doesn't stop there. The show's hit website, pbskidsgo.org/electriccompany, has had nearly four million site visits and over 11 million Electric Company video clips played since its launch in mid- January 2009.

Also this fall, THE ELECTRIC COMPANY will be partnering with local PBS stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as after-school organizations to bring a "Shock" to twenty cities nationwide with THE ELECTRIC COMPANY 2009 Circuit Tour. Starting August 8th, THE ELECTRIC COMPANY's star beat boxer, Shock, will host a 90 minute experience in each city beginning with a 25-minute multimedia, interactive show. The Circuit Tour will also include hands-on pre- and post-show activities that will engage kids with interactive content, games and demonstrations in an effort to give today's 2nd grader the literacy tools necessary to succeed in 3rd grade and beyond.

"We are thrilled to bring this critical piece of THE ELECTRIC COMPANY directly into communities around the country," says Randell Bynum, Director of Educational Outreach for THE ELECTRIC COMPANY. "We look forward to sharing a live, interactive Electric Company experience that will turn kids on to the power of reading."THE ELECTRIC COMPANY is part of PBS KIDS Raising Readers, a national literacy initiative focused on using public media to improve the reading skills for children ages two-to-eight, with an emphasis on children from low-income families. The effort is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education, part of a cooperative agreement with CPB- and PBS.

20 Fun Language & Thinking Games for Travellers

This post, used with permission, from Literacy, Families and Learning is a real gem. There are 20 wonderful games to use with the kids on long trips, or even short ones. If you're homeschooling or just want to give your kids a learning boost, they'll be great as well. Enjoy!!

This post is a follow on from my last post 'Holiday Activities: 30 simple ways to stimulate learning' (here). This time I've just focussed on great language games that can be easily played in the car on long (or short) journeys. Many of them could also be played in a bus, or in some cases, a train. I've tried to keep the ideas simple and adaptable for use with children of varied ages. I've included a number of games that we played with our children in the car when they were young, some I used when teaching and some new ones that I'd love to play with my grandchildren. Most of the new ones have been gleaned from a great resource published by Usborne Children's books, '50 things to do on a journey' (here). I've modified many of the latter to suit the needs of younger children as well. One thing to note is that you don't have to play every one of these games competitively and if you do, you might need to handicap older children.

1. Sound word categoriesYou start this game by agreeing on 3-5 categories (depending on the age of the children and their vocabularies) for which people will have to be able to think of words that belong to them; for example, an insect, flower, person, country, girl's name, action word. Someone chooses a letter (maybe Mum or Dad to make sure that it isn't too hard) that has to be used by everyone and is applied to each category. The fastest person to quickly name their words earns 3 points, the second gets 2 and the third 1. So for the letter 'f' and the three categories insect, country and girl's name you could say fly, France and Fiona. A parent usually acts as the timer.

For games 2 to 20 just click this link Literacy, Families and Learning

We Should Teach Handwriting

In response to many on the internet who say that handwriting is becoming obsolete, I would like to say. No, No, No - It is as important as it always was. Please see the article below from the career and job site 'Highere' on 12th March 2009

Should you complete applications for employment in capital letters?

Capital Letters will draw attention and also irritate people. Most of the companies ask you to complete applicatoin for employment in Handwriting, as they want to either look at how you write, and or do a basic handwriting analysis to check on your profile. A few basic pointers in Handwriting analysis, that the companies watch out for:

1. Are you writing in a straight line (stable personality), dropping lines - lines going downwards (not confident), lines going upwards (over confident)

2. Do you punctuate properly, spell properly, to judge your language skills

3. Do you put the dots on your i’s or the dashes in your t’s, the dot missing means, you are casual about your approach, the dot preceeding the i, means that you think ahead, and the dot after the i means that you are running too fast.

This is just a guideline, and by no means a teaching of handwriting analysis. I am no expert of Handwriting analysis, but I personally accept applications in writing for people who join my company, to make sure they can write cleanly and have the right spellings. Pressing Spell check in a word file and or an online editor is a kid’s job, and a kid can write a classic document, but writing the proper way, with proper spelling by hand is a bit difficult.

Handwriting Readiness Pt.7 - Understanding Spatial Relationships

The directions that teachers use to teach handwriting in the school assume that children understand spatial and temporal(related to or limited by time) concepts. Hey what???

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These are obviously terms used to confuse any but the initiated, but all it really means is can they get their minds, to communicate to the hand, the directions the teacher is giving them. Terms such as "on top of the line, "above the line," or "between the lines" and many more, are used in handwriting instruction.
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An ability to understand these terms is acquired as children develop both physically and mentally. The age at which the average child begins to understand the position "in" is 2 years. Additional positions or locations are learned as the child increases in age, with the most challenging locations, "back/front" usually understood by the average child at 4 years 8 months.
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Practice in understanding locations or positions is covered in the preschool curriculum, but it is often assumed by Kindergarten teachers that this concept has already been gained and they proceed from there. If a student's concepts in this area are only a few months later in developing, than their entry to kindergarten, it can effect their self esteem, or belief in themselves, to the extent that they cease believing that they can succeed.

I'm going to get on my favourite hobby horse here, about mid-year intake in Kindergarten. What this actually does is take a child into Kindergarten who is approximately six months younger in age, skill and concept development and only give them half a year of Kindergarten before they are required to keep up with the curriculum in year one. Now I ask you - does that sound, in any way at all, logical to you, or good for your child? If you answer "Not logical at all." and you say "I'll never do that to my child", I'll give you an A++++++++. Please, please, please, even if you do think you have a genius on your hands, and you may, hold your child back until the beginning of the next year.

Activities to help your child with positions are fairly obvious. I've given you some below, but you'll probably think of lots more as you progress.

1. Take something in your hand. Hold it in different positions and ask your child to tell you where it is.

2. Find the object. Hide something and give the child instructions, one at a time, on how to find it. Use a lot of position words. such as in, on, under, over, above, through. If you want to brainstorm about position words use the sentence. "The fox jumped..................the gate." Any word that fits in the space in this sentence is a position or location word.

3. More advanced practice. Take a picture with objects in it and ask the child to describe to you where one particular object is. Make it simple to begin with - not many things on the page. As they gain skill you can make the picture more complicated. Repeat their instructions out loud as you find the object and be very positive when you do.

4. Give your child an object to hold and then give them instructions about where to hide it. You can leave it at that, or you can prolong the game by getting your little student to give someone else position/location instructions on how to find it.

Educators Are Best Understood as "Ignorance Engineers"

This is a reprint of a very thought provoking article by Bruce Deitrick Price.

I tend to agree with him, on the whole, both about the Maths and Reading. It's been heartbreaking, tutoring children who are the product of this type of education. They are so worn down by the process, with poor self esteem and no faith in their abilities.

Of course there are some children who will learn, no matter how they're taught, or should I say in spite of how they're taught. If you have a child like this, then thank God. Most children do need good teaching and they haven't been given that. The most terrible thing is that they've not only received poor teaching, but they've been blamed for their own failure and believed the lie they've been fed.

It's not their fault! They still have the ability to learn if they're taught properly. The problem that we run into, is to convince them that this is so. It's very, very hard to ask someone to believe this truth, when they've accepted a lie about themselves for so long.

Here is the article.....

Public schools seem to be in a constant state of disarray and low performance. We have to wonder: are our educators hopelessly inept? Or is intellectual sabotage a factor?

Some experts argued that educators have been sidetracked by social engineering. Here, the main goal is that students have correct opinions rather than that they learn a lot. (The Civil War? Oh, that´s about the injustice of slavery. What else needs mentioning?)

Note that schools in Socialist and Communist countries engage in endless indoctrination, but they also find time to teach a lot of information, as required by the traditional educational model. So it´s clear that both can be done.

The striking thing about American public schools is that students stop learning even the simplest things. Children are in school roughly a thousand hours a year, for a total of 12,000 hours from grades one to 12. But in that vast mansion of time there doesn´t seem to be room for a match box of facts. Find Japan on a map? Don´t be silly. Nobody needs to know that.

Can social engineering, as normally defined, explain why American children know very little? I don´t think so. The ignorance is too towering. The more I looked at the shortcomings of our public schools, the more I was forced to conclude: somebody is deliberately aiming very, very low.

The picture starts to make sense if you assume that American educators, at the PhD level, are not social engineers so much as ignorance engineers. All their ideas and policies appear directed at mass-producing mediocrity, to the degree they can get away with it.

Their concern seems not to be with shaping opinions so much as making sure nobody learns anything worth having an opinion about! Perhaps this nihilistic kind of social engineering is more easily snuck into classrooms.

I didn´t reach this distrustful view casually or in a sudden epiphany. No, it was slowly forced on me as I contemplated the pitiful spectacle of math courses that don´t teach any math, a reading pedagogy that doesn´t permit anyone to learn to read, and geography, history and science courses that are not concerned with anyone retaining information.

What we seem to have is a widespread war against civilization, especially American civilization, conducted in every subject and at every level. Here´s a quick run-down of the incriminating evidence in the main disciplines:

MATH: Decades ago, our educators concocted a fatuous fraud known as New Math. The public laughed. The educators went underground for several years and came up with a bunch of replacements now known (sarcastically) as New New Math. Some of today´s leading textbooks are called TERC, Connected Math, Everyday Mathematics, MathLand, etc. Children taking these courses learn virtually no real math.

To understand this craziness quickly, please see a wonderful video on YouTube titled "An Inconvenient Truth" by M. J. McDermott. Give McDermott 15 minutes and you will understand the vacuity of these programs.

What sort of people would devise math books that don´t teach math?? Ignorance engineers.

READING: It was by studying Whole Word (also known as Look-Say) that I really came to understand the scandal of our schools. This unworkable pedagogy has created 50,000,000 functional illiterates. What could be more vicious?

By all accounts, 99% of children taught with phonics learn to read by the age of 7, or 8 at latest. But children stuck in Whole Word classrooms are made to memorize word shapes one by one (a tedious process), thereby guaranteeing that most of these children will be semi-literate well into high school.

Still worse, this bogus pedagogy is shrouded in sophistry. Even highly educated people rarely understand what Whole Word is. How can the public defend itself against this dangerous hoax? That seems to be the point. I´ve created some graphic videos that try to explain Whole Word in a few minutes. Please visit YouTube and enter "phonics versus whole word."For a longer, more historical analysis, please see "30: The War Against Reading" on Improve-Education.org.

FACTS, IN GENERAL: The dogma is that children should not be expected to memorize ANYTHING. Teachers say: "They can look it up." In real life, this means that nobody knows nothing. About history, science, geography, the arts, or which way is north.

This rampant ignorance is dramatized every time Jay Leno goes "JayWalking." I developed "The Quizz--100 simple facts that every high school student should know" to spotlight the same emptiness. (Google "20: The Quizz")

IN CONCLUSION: Throughout all the years that this dumbing down has been going on, our educators have been yelling for more money. As if that is the key to the kingdom. Not at all. Genuine educators with half the budget would easily outperform the ideologues now in charge.

The central tragedy is that these misguided educators seem to have little concern for the needs of children or the good of the country. Let the people eat cake. (Please print this piece and follow up the leads at your convenience. That our so-called educators would actually function as anti-educators is THE story of the 20th century.)

Handwriting Readiness Pt.6 - Basic Stroke Formations

One of the hardest things for a child when learning handwriting, is fluency. He is so concerned with getting it right, that instead of a uniform curve or circle, it becomes a wobbly formation.

To help with fluency Danielle Dumont, an expert from France, teaches children using a ribbon and making waves and squiggles with the ribbon in the air (rather in the way that a gymnast uses the ribbon). Once the circles, waves and squiggles that the ribbon is making are fluent, transfer that same fluency with chalk to the chalkboard. This helps the student to feel that flow and to use it when working on a smaller area.

Proficiency in basic stroke formations is a tremendously important part of handwriting. What is an intelligent child likely to do, if you put some lined paper in front of him. with strokes done in dots - you then tell him to trace the strokes, but be careful not to go below the line? That's easy! He'll start at the line and go up the stroke so that he'll be sure to get it just right. It makes perfect sense to him, because he hasn't been told that this is practice for writing letters and they begin with a downward stroke and never an upward one. The solution to this is to explain this to him.

Except for v,w,x,y,z, which start with a slanted downward stroke or in the case of z a horizontal stroke, (none of which, by the way, begin on the line) all other small case letters start with either a vertical down stroke or a curve moving in an anticlockwise direction.

Children should never be taught how to write the letters, until they have considerable skill in tracing pictures or shapes. You can use ordinary cheap colouring books for this and textas or coloured pencils (thick, three sided ones). At this stage don't worry about the direction in which your child traces. The aim (or I could call it a game) here, is to trace without straying from the picture outline. He needs to be able to keep the texta or pencil tracing that line, for as long as possible, before he stops, lifts it up and then puts it down on the line, to begin tracing again.

Some of this can be done without you supervising. You'll usually be able to see the stops and starts and judge how proficient your child is becoming. It is wise though, to sit with him sometimes to observe and also the encourage - encouragement motivates! After the outlining is done, he may see the picture as being finished or he may want to colour it in further. Go with the flow. Colouring in also requires a certain control of the pencil.

Once he has shown proficiency (not perfection!!) with tracing, you can progress to formal pre-writing sheets. Here is where you need to sit with him and watch him like a hawk. It's good to verbalise with him as he does the strokes - 'start at the top and trace down'. He'll probably get sick of your verbalisation after a while and just want to get on with the job. Just tell him that you'll stop, but if he starts at the line and goes up, you'll have to help him again by verbalising. Children usually find this a fair bargain and it will motivate him to concentrate harder.

All the curved shapes on the pre-writing sheet must be done in an anticlockwise direction and again you need to watch all the time. Where to start when tracing circles?? Different writing schemes teach different ways, when the student begins on the letters of the alphabet. Picture in your mind a circular head with ears. Actually draw it, if you're working with your child. Some writing schemes teach that you form a,d,g,o,q by starting at the top of the head, or on the line, and drawing an anticlockwise circle. Then for f,s,c, you start just above the right ear, go up to the line and then proceed to finish your letter.

In theory this sounds fine, but what often happens is that students also persist in starting their f,s,c on the top of the circle, or on the line, too. It's so much easier to have an obvious starting point. You can imagine the finished product - it's long and skinny and undefined. I recommend starting all these letters above the right ear. It's much simpler in the long run and the letters have a better flow to them.

Okay! Getting back to pre-writing sheets - make a small mark on any circle just where the top of the right ear would be and get your child to begin tracing anticlockwise from there. If there are spirals, or any other curves, make sure they're traced in an anticlockwise direction too.

Handwriting Readiness Pt.5 - Utensil or Tool Manipulation

No! This doesn't mean that you get out the hammer, the electric saw and the drill set. It's just

psychologist's jargon for the level of skill, with which children use ordinary, everyday things like a spoon or fork, crayons, plastic scissors, glue brush, paintbrush, etc. Can they tie their shoe laces, clean their teeth properly, get a top to spin?

These are skills that can be developed. For those of us old enough to remember, there was junior mechano and the progression to the even smaller parts of the regular mechano, with the tools to join parts together. Most boys had a set of some size to make all manner of wonderful inventions. There were even small motors, that moved parts.

Then there were those kits with tiny pieces to build model, ships, cars and many other things. Hours were spent in this way and these were wonderful for creating exceptional manipulative skill with hands and fingers.

For girls, who had kind brothers, the mechano sets were often a favourite, but I also remember making pictures with tiny beads, learning to sew with tiny stitches, making little tea sets with clay, colouring, drawing, painting, or french knitting. I remember my brother was addicted to french knitting for a while. He ended up with a length that stretched all the way from the front fence to the back fence. We ended up making a mat with it.

And now the good news - all these things, including some great mechano are still available today, plus many more activities to get little fingers nimble and clever with manipulating tools - large and small - and increasing the strength of those tiny muscles needed to successfully guide a pencil.

Before we go any further, I want to stress, really stress, the importance of your prospective writer being given the thicker, three sided pencils to use. You can get them in plain lead and colours. I know they are more expensive and need sharpening more often, but they encourage the tripod grip and are much easier to manipulate than the thinner ones.

As in any kind of tool manipulation, there is a way to hold a pencil which has been proved to cause the least stress on hand muscles and help writing to flow more evenly. This is called the dynamic tripod grip. Children develop the habit of holding their pencils in ways different to this, for a variety of reasons. The most common reason, is participating in lots of writing before their hands are developmentally ready for it.

Other than forming a habit for the wrong pencil grip, the most common problem is how much pressure your young student is putting on the pencil. Some children press too hard, writing slowly and deliberately and putting great stress on the muscles in their hands and fingers. Obviously, this will prove to be very uncomfortable for them and they won't be at all motivated to practice their writing. To help them realise how hard to press, put their writing paper on a thin foam board. When they press too hard, their pencil will go through the paper into the foam. Make a game of it, to see if they can write without the pencil going through, but heavy enough to make the writing clear.

The opposite problem - not pressing hard enough - can be helped if you use paper with a carbon backing or just a piece of carbon paper stapled between two sheets of paper. If the writer doesn't press hard enough, the copy won't be seen on the sheet beneath.

Other ways to improve manipulative skills are:

1. String plastic, ceramic, glass or even beads you make yourself from paper mache etc, and decorate them.

2. Sew with wool to make felt hand puppets, pillows or clothes for dolls, little purses, marble bags or whatever your little creative genius desires.

3.Weave placemats with craft foam, coloured paper, craft ribbon, crepe paper or anything else you discover will work.

4.Make flower necklaces out of real flowers or the small craft ones.

5.Make pom-poms from two cardboard donut shapes and wool.

6.Make paper flowers from tissue, crepe or ordinary coloured paper. If you've used the type of paper, on which you can use glue, sprinkle with sparkle or decorate in some other way.

7. Check out a library book and learn to make origami animals. Best to check one out from the children's section if possible. Some of the designs can get very complicated.

8. Make paper chains as decoration. These can be used also to hang up and write the name of each book you've read together on a separate chain. It can cause great excitement and even motivate children to ask to have books read to them, to fill up the chain completely. Try having a blank chain for each month with a do-able number of links.

Read to Your Baby

This article is from Vanderhoof Omineca Express but I'm reprinting it here to emphasise what I've been saying about starting to read to your children early. It's called Learning to read by Elaine Storey.

It is never too early to start creating learning experiences for children:
Your role as parents, take in laying the building blocks that form your child’s language and literacy foundation. Your baby’s brain is equipped to absorb enormous amounts of information.

We know that the time before babies start talking – from birth to two is a crucial time for their future language development. Let’s look at different ways your baby will benefit from a daily read-aloud routine.

Read-Alouds promote listening skills:
Listening is a crucial skill in the formation of language. Your baby has been listening to your voice, since the last few months of pregnancy and by birth has a fairly well developed hearing ability. Newborns instantly recognize their parents’ voice. Repeated exposure to reading, gives children a head start once they go to school. This allows them to comprehend more complex stories, and ease into the reading and reading process.

Read-Alouds develop attention span and memory:
Babies are capable of an intense concentration; their brains are searching and scanning everything they come in contact with in order to get information and meaning. Reading aloud to your baby is the best way to help develop attention span and memory.

Read-Alouds promote bonding and calmness for both baby and parent:
Reading aloud is one of the easiest and least complicated of daily tasks you do with your baby. It helps you bond and attach to your child. It promotes family togetherness.

Read-Alouds instill the love of books and learning:
When you read to your baby, you are giving your child some of life’s greatest gifts: the cuddly, loving warmth of a close, one-to one, daily reading aloud time enriches vocabulary that forever expands the mind. So start reading to your baby today!

Handwriting Readiness Pt.3 - Small Muscle Development

Large muscle development in a small child's hands takes place quite early. Any parent who's tried to take something away from a child who really wants it, will vouch for this. However, there are numerous smaller muscles in the hand that need to strengthen before a child can successfully guide a pencil. If a student is asked to begin writing before he has full control over these muscles, letter formation will be effected.

Following are exercises to aid in the development of the smaller muscles in a child's hand.

1. Colouring and drawing with crayons is a great way to develop these muscles. The resistance that a crayon gives, strengthens the fingers and provides tactile (feeling) feedback to the brain in a way that textas and pencils will not. Colouring with crayons on construction paper will provide even more resistance.

Construction paper is a stiff, heavy, inexpensive matte or eggshell finish paper. Made from ground wood pulp, it is available in a variety of colors, and its primary application is children's arts and crafts and school projects. It can also be called sugar paper and is typically available in large sheets and sometimes rolls. The texture is slightly rough, and the surface is unfinished. Due to the nature of the source material from which the paper is manufactured, small particles are visible on the paper’s surface.

To save money on crayons and make the exercise more interesting, let the student peel the paper from the crayon stubs or broken crayons, that can't be used any more (great fine motor control exercise). Place them in foil made into different shapes and melt them into new rainbow coloured crayons.

2. Squeezing and rolling clay, plasticine or play dough is also good for strengthening tiny hands. Children love to roll it into a ball and then pushing holes in it with their thumbs or rolling out long sausage-like sections and making shapes with them. If you're working with play dough or plasticine children can cut the lengths with their craft scissors. For clay a ruler separates the pieces quite well, as long as the clay is soft enough.

3. Make stamps from potatoes or other vegetables. A spoon can be used for this and if the vegetable is too hard, just stick a fork in it a couple of times to help out. Doing the carving and then learning how much pressure to apply, to actually use the stamp is a terrific exercise for tiny hands. Tip: use paint and not ink for this.

4. Make old fashioned tin can lanterns with a hammer and nail. Take an ordinary tin can and remove the paper from the outside. With supervision let your child put holes all over it with a nail and small hammer. Then put a candle inside the can and the light will shine through the holes. The student can paint the outside of the can if he likes, but make sure that he doesn't use anything that will melt.

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5. Draw with chalk on a board or on the concrete pathways, steps, terrace, patio, outside brick wall - it will wash off with water. You can get packets of sidewalk chalk that's very thick so that your child won't scrape his knuckles on the concrete when he tries to draw.

6. Playing Jacks. Click here for a great explanation on how the game is played and there are other old fashioned games on this site that you might want to use with your child as well. Sometimes I think that the saying 'everything old becomes new again' is very true. For Jacks you can use flattish stones, you can still buy Knuckles or Jacks games from some games shops, or you can do it the way it was done fifty years ago by actually getting five sheep's knuckles from the butcher and leaving them on an ant's nest until they're nice and clean and dry and ready to be used - great natural science lesson. You can paint the bones different colours later or just leave them as they are.

Handwriting Readiness Pt.2 - What are Fine Motor Skills?

We take well developed fine motor skills for granted, but they are required for successfully completing simple tasks such as using a knife and fork, punching a phone number or texting on those tiny mobile phones. threading a needle or sewing, playing most musical instruments, playing computer games, gardening, using tweezers, putting on makeup and even tying your sneakers.

These fine motor skills are basic prerequisites for students to succeed academically. That's why helping children develop finger strength and tactile dexterity is so very important. Of course you can do this after they've tried to write well and failed, but it's much harder to turn a failure in any area into a success, than to put in the preliminary work necessary and go straight to success. The trauma of failure in front of all their peers, is not really something to which we want to introduce our children, in their first year of school.

If you take your child to a play group or preschool they will get some of the activities there, that are needed to develop fine motor skills. Don't, however, count on that!

Boys, especially, would in general, much rather be outside playing cars in the sandpit or climbing on the gym equipment, than sitting inside threading wool through a card or playing with the play dough. The preschool teacher will try to make sure that each child has an equal opportunity to develop both gross and fine motor skills, but don't just rely on that.

As a parent, keep an eye on your child's development. How skillfully does she use her knife and fork, can she tie her shoelaces properly - that doesn't mean eventually. If she need a few tries before she succeeds that's fine, but if she's up to number five or six and she's still not been successful, it may be a sign that she needs to further develop those fine motor skills. Another way to check is by doing some craft with her, where she needs to work with small items and note how nimble her fingers are.

There are so many fantastic activities you can do with your children at home, to help them develop great fine motor control. Some of them are messy, but aren't your kids worth that? If you're worried about the carpet, pick a fine day and take a card table or plastic table cloth outside. Maybe you'll have to move the daily grind around to make time for the activities, but just think of all the time you'll save later on in their lives, when you're trying to explain their homework to them and you're hitting a brick wall because failure has become ingrained in their minds.

Handwriting Readiness (Pt.1) in Children aged 3 - 6 years

"What's all this about handwriting readiness?" you might say. "You just give the kid a pencil and off she goes. Right!"

Well, actually, No! Giving your child pencils too early in their development, can quite often lead to illegible, untidy, badly formed and badly sized writing, which will take a great deal of time to correct later on - that's if it can be corrected. It takes a great deal of determination in a student to change a stongly ingrained bad habit and some find it just too hard.

Handwriting is a complex operation. Activities that use all senses (multi-sensory) and feeling and moving (kinesthetic), prepare students for letter and number formation before they begin learning to write.

Well developed fine motor skills are necessary for a student to write well and it is the very, very, rare three or four year old, who has these skills. A five year old, who has had sufficient pre-handwriting experiene may be ready, but sometimes a child may be even older before these skills develop.

Handwriting readiness is dependent upon the presence of seven foundational skills.

1. small muscle development
2. hand-eye coordination
3. utensil or tool manipulation
4. basic stroke formation
5. alphabet letter recognition
6. orientation to written language
7. understanding of spatial relationships
   

Fomal handwriting instruction can begin as early as kindergarten year and some children will take off and never look back. Some, however, will struggle for the rest of their lives, because one or more of the above seven developmental stages had not been reached, when they were required to learn letter formation.

In following blogs, I'll explain more fully the seven prerequisites for handwriting readiness and give activities that can aid in the formation of each.

IMPORTANT and again IMPORTANT

There also needs to be gross motor activities to get the brain going and give students more control over their bodies. Try dancing, little athletics, skipping, running around kicking a ball with them - get them moving and away from the TV and computer games. Not that these things are necessarily bad, but there needs to be balance.

What are Phonics?

Emma Hartnell-Baker is a guest blogger this week. Check out her website here

When is a good time to start teaching children to read?

A child begins learning at birth. Early experiences with spoken and written language set the stage for a child to become a successful reader. The more you talk, read and interact with your child, the better chance he has to become a good reader. A good time to start teaching your child about letters and sounds is when he begins to talk.

What is print awareness?

When a child learns about print and books and how they are used, this is called print awareness. He becomes familiar with the idea that the words he sees in print are related to the words he speaks. For example, words can be seen in books or on billboards.

What is alphabetic knowledge?

When a child begins knowing the names and shapes of letters this is called alphabetic knowledge.

What is phonological awareness?

When a child begins to understand that sentences are made up of words, and words have parts called syllables, he is beginning to develop phonological awareness which is the ability to learn about sounds of spoken language.

What is phonemic awareness?

When a child also understands that spoken words are made up of separate small sounds, he is developing phonemic awareness. These individual sounds in spoken language are called phonemes. For example, there are three phonemes (or sounds) in the word big, /b/, /i/, and /g/. (A letter between slash marks shows the sound that the letter represents, not the name of the letter).

What is phonics?

Phonics is when a reader learns to use letter/sound relationships to form words and is able to recognize words when he sees them.

What is blending?

Blending is when the reader puts together sounds to make words.

What is Segmentation?

When the child takes spoken words apart sound by sound.

What is phonics instruction?

Phonics instruction is when the instructor helps the beginning reader see the relationship between sounds of spoken language and letters of written language. Understanding these relationships gives the child a tool that he can use to recognize familiar words and figure out words he hasn't seen before.

More on Toxic Words

Here is a follow up on the entry by Guest Blogger, Carole Rule on Toxic Words. This is an enormously important subject when trying to teach your child. It takes strength of mind to change the way you react, but if you've chosen to help your child to succeed, you have that strength of mind.





Toxic words cut into the ego even when we use them on ourselves, so imagine how much worse it is on a child who looks up to you and wants to please you. I mentioned some of them in my last blog but there are others.

Let me list the words and how they cut.

'but' - negates what you just said, so even if it was praise, you have just taken it back or worse.


'if ' - presupposes you may not succeed, setting YOU up for failure be it a child or yourself.


'would have' - draws attention to what didn't happen, nullifying what did happen.


'should have' - not only draws attention but implies guilt because it didn't happen.


'could have' - tries to take credit for what didn't happen and ignore what did happen.


'try' - not only presupposes failure it gives permission to fail!


'might' - leaves options for the listener, not definitive answers.


'can't or don't' - forces focus on the opposite of what you want.


True stories:


A boy and his cousin were playing in the yard and climbing trees when a storm blew in. The aunt called out to her son "Don't fall!" while the boy's father yelled "Hang on!" The boy hung on tightly to the limb and was ok but the cousin fell and broke his arm because the brain first has to figure what is supposed to be done before it can interpret not to do it.


On a little league team there was a pop ball to an area of the field with the weakest player. Dad yelled at him "Don't drop it!" but the coach yelled "Catch it!" What do you think happened? Well luckily the coach was louder and closer and the kid caught the ball. They didn't win the game but think how proud that boy was that he actually caught the ball.

so

If you get into the habit of watching what you say to yourself, maybe you will be better about toxic words to your child, so both of you will benefit. If you stop wondering what if or I should have, after making decisions, you will find you are less indecisive and will stop tearing your own ego down.

Super Teachers Needed

Explanation of the Two Major Approaches to Reading

The two best known approaches to teaching reading are the Phonics Approach and the Whole Language Approach. Below is an excellent article that clearly explains the origin and explanation of both. My writing it out for you would be a waste of time, so I've printed out the first paragraph and then, if you want to read more, just click on the link below.

While this is a well written article, the conclusion at which it arrives, is idealistic and unworkable. After all explanation of both approaches, it concludes that the teacher should aim to teach what the individual student requires from each approach. Keeping in mind that the teacher has, perhaps, thirty or more students in his/her class, that means thirty or more indivual lessons each day just for teaching reading and writing.

Of course the teacher could combine the students into groups so that each group needed approximately the same type of teaching, but even then there is the need to both plan and mark an inordinate number of lessons each day. This is just for reading and writing. What about time to teach the rest of the subjects? As you can see the end conclusion in this article would require an impossible amount of time and energy for any teacher, hence the need for super powers. However, do not despair, there is a way for you, as parents to help your child. I'll cover this in the next blog.

ARTICLE

There have been, over the years, two general instructional approaches that have governed reading education. They have gone by many names, but today they are generally known as Phonics and Whole Language approaches. These approaches to reading instruction reflect very different underlying philosophies and stress very different skills.

The philosophy underlying the Whole Language approach is that reading is a natural process, much like learning to speak, and that children exposed to a great deal of authentic, connected text will naturally become literate without much in the way of explicit instruction in the rules and conventions of printed text.

The philosophy underlying the Phonics approach is quite different -- Phonics advocates argue that in order to learn to read, most children require a great deal of explicit instruction in the rules of printed text. Click here for the rest of the article.

Toxic Words

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This blog entry is by Carole Rule, a guest blogger. She has her own blog called Your Handwriting Explained, which is a fascinating read if you're interested in analysing handwriting.

Most of us perpetuate thoughts and actions, without realizing it, by treating our children and others as we were treated growing up. Not to say this is always a bad thing, especially if we were raised in a nurturing family.

We have all heard that abuse engenders abuse and how many of us as teens have said, "When I have children I will never do that to my kids", only to find as a parent we do the same things mom and dad did. If this something is making them hold to a curfew, do chores, be responsible, well great! These things need to be learned and followed. But the parent that uses toxic words or goes overboard on punishments, even if it is just timeouts, is fostering that use in their child and this we don't want to pass on to future generations

Lets look at toxic words, just simple everyday words we all use but oh how they can poison a child's mind. Always...now stop and think about it, no one 'always' anything. It's just, at that moment in time you think of how often they do something they were told not to do and forget how often they do right. Next is never...again no one never listens, never follows instructions, never does things right or whatever you are chastizing them for. Stop to think. Do you 'always' or 'never' do things?

How about 'but'? Do you praise a child for something only to take it away by saying 'but'? But why can't you do that all the time? But why didn't you do that the first time? Only a three letter word and it can do so much damage. And, yes, I nearly said 'but' it can do so much damage. And remember would'a, could'a, should'a. We often say these things about something we messed up and yes, even then they are derogatory, but to a child would, could and should can cut the self-esteem down so very badly.

Worst of all, we don't mean to inflict damage to their ego, but in frustration, anger or the heat of the moment it happens. We speak out, without a thought of the message we are giving out to our children. And while we are on the subject think of your own ego. These same words are just as toxic to us and maybe, if we learn to use other words in their place, we won't be so quick to use them on the children.

When you want to say "You did great today 'but'" why not say "I'm really proud of what you did today" and leave it at that. Or how about "That was great! Do you remember just how you did that?" This will tell them you are proud of them and reinforce to remember just what made it so great.

As for yourself, if you mess up and especially if its not the first time, then tell yourself "I really need to slow down and do this the proper way next time, because I really do know how to do it."

Teaching Handwriting - Choose the Style

PENCIL GRIP

This pencil grip is recommended because it puts the least stress on the fingers and enables the writer to continue writing for a longer period without the hand getting tired.

Images from Draw Your World

PALMER STYLE






















HANDWRITING WITHOUT TEARS

MODERN MANUSCRIPT


















MANUSCRIPT

The Importance of Teaching Handwriting

Handwriting is really brainwriting. Hand(brain)writing reflects an individual's personality. The brain is the source of your personality, and it is actually your brain that writes. This means that each person's writing will be unique, because that person is unique. However, the basis of this individual handwriting needs to be taught. We need to start teaching children the right starting point, the right direction, the right position. We need to supervise and give them practice, practice, practice, so that their writing becomes fluent. From there they can change their handwriting to reflect their personality.

All this matters, educators say, because evidence is growing that handwriting fluency is a fundamental building block of learning. Emily Knapton, director of program development at Handwriting Without Tears, believes that "when kids struggle with handwriting, it filters into all their academics. Spelling becomes a problem; math becomes a problem because they reverse their numbers. All of these subjects would be much easier for these kids to learn, if handwriting was an automatic process."

The trend towards illegible handwriting is not likely to slow, proponents of penmanship say, as computers become even more common and school systems place less importance on teaching handwriting. Interest in teaching penmanship in America has reached such a low point, that the National Cursive Handwriting Contest for elementary school students will not be held during the coming year for the first time in its century-old history. This attitude towards handwriting is also becoming prevalent in Australia.

More and more, our schools are producing students who have severe problems with handwriting and spelling. It is of the utmost importance to make sure that your children can write legibly and fluently. If the schools are not teaching them, then for their sakes, you need to give them your help. For help to do this check out the links at the top of this blog. They are free resources.