Preparing Children for the New School Year over the summer.
so my 5 yr old is in pre k now and going into Kindergarten in the fall. i want to teach him a few things so he has a good head start.. for instance i want to teach him his site words, his letters, colors, etc.. all the basics. he does have a good since of alot of them already but i feel it would be better if he had a good core down of it all before school even starts.
my oldest is going into first. he had two years of kindergarten. we are going to continue working on site words and adding to them, reading more, more sentence writing and more.
does anyone have any tips on how i can go about teaching over the summer? i am a full time working mom and can find time for about a half hour a day for each kid for learning.
i also though i would reward with stickers, and im trying to figure out how to plan it out. like should i get a planner just for them and each day i work on specific things for example two site words a day,etc..
any ideas how i can succeed at all this. i could use all the tips i can get specially from moms who home school. and any idea of the best way to teach site words?
m yson is going into 1st grade next year two. i set up an hour assignment that he can mor or less do himself, an 1hr that i can coach him and then an hour (maybe slightly less where we exercise, do an art project or a science experiement since he loves those. i discuss with him the night before what is expected the next day. He also reads the easier chapter books... we love the Magic Tree House Series. Last summer I put index cards with the name of everything all over my house... which made it into a game... he loved it and got alot out of it. some words you cant do it so i went through and highlighted them in his books so he would get used to seeing them and see how offten they are used. i also made him write them all out (he can spell them all also)we alwasy work on site words, just to keep them from falling away-lol. at this age ive learned i have to keep reinforcing everything. he gets tested on those before bed. i found a list of 244 with like 95 nouns or whatever that i saved somewhere from last year if you want it.
I always go the big fat Summer workbooks to go through so they didn't lose what they learned before. I think its sad kids lose so much and the teachers spend 4-6 weeks during the beginning of the school year re teaching things all over again.
I homeschool my boys and I suggest you find something they love or work the things they need to work on into a game. This summer I asked my son what he wanted to learn about and he told me Chemistry. I picked 50 most common elements and wrote them on foam circles. My children invented their own game using them. We were able to work math, reading, letters, and many other things into what we were learning. My sons spent a lot of time pouring over the periodic table. My youngest asked me to read him about the two bad boys. The things kids come up with. He wanted to have me read to him about the two elements of salt.
Don't make it like school work but find ways to work it into more like a game for them. Kids learn the most by playing. It is how their brains are wired. I use a program called looney tunes phonic and it is awesome. It is an online learning program for teaching kids to read. It is also fun for kids. I use it with my son and he loves it. It has 100 lessons and my boys were reading on their own by the time they reached the end. Good luck and if you need any more suggestions just let me know. Have a great summer!
im getting the urge again... (a little of a vent also)
- charnrich26
on Jun. 20, 2012 at 12:43 PM