Five Tips for Successful Teaching at Home

Parents can make great teachers. We have some luxuries that teachers at school don’t always have...access to our kids when they are at their best and in a wider variety of environments. We don’t have to hurry. We don’t have to start the relationship from scratch every fall. We already know what motivates and delights our kids.

We can use these advantages for boosting our kids’ learning. Whether we support learning that is already happening at school or branch off with our own set of skills to learn, our kids can learn a lot at home. Here are five essential mindsets to make the most of the time we spend helping our kids learn.

1) Expect the best. Children tend to live up to the expectations of those people they value. Believe—honestly believe!—in your child. He’ll pick up on your attitude. Just as important, tell him you have confidence in what he can do. Be his most supportive cheerleader. Brag up your child’s accomplishments to others in her hearing, always ending with, “But then, it’s no surprise. We knew she could do it.”

2) Make learning interesting. Tie it in to your child’s passions. By relating the topic/activity to something child loves, you’ll keep her interest much better.

If she is crazy for penguins, let her practice her reading on books about penguins. Import images of penguins from the Internet into Powerpoint and let her write facts as captions to make a book. It can be as simple as her writing in the missing word in a repeating frame sentence on each page:  “Penguins _____ ....” She’ll remember—and read—“can” after this activity much better than if she copied the word five times on a worksheet!

Shark Toob toys

Work on ordering sizes using her penguin collection, letting her set them in a line from smallest to largest. Use penguin manipulatives to practice adding and subtracting facts to ten (check out all the types of “toob” sets available through Amazon.com using their search feature; Michael’s Crafts also carries them. They come in every theme you can imagine!).

Bring in music. Maybe I’m dating myself, but I still remember grammar rules from “SchoolHouse Rock” songs played during intermissions between cartoons. Oh, and facts about the solar system from an astronomy operetta we learned in 6^th grade. Check out SongsForTeaching.com to preview some fun song-fact CDs you could sing together in the car to make good use of that time driving back and forth to therapy. Or type a search into YouTube for “(your topic) songs.”

Make drill work into a game. There are many more ways to practice drill than on worksheets or flashcards! More-than/less-than is pretty ho-hum as a worksheet exercise, but everybody loves a rousing game of War (the new politically correct name is “Top It.” Parents have no idea what that is. It’s just the same good old game of War we grew up loving).  

Touch your head it the number is even, touch your toes if it is odd. Or convert true/false into a Simon Says game; if the fact is true, do the motion. If the fact is false, don’t change to the motion.

There are way too many sources on the Web to list for free online games to practice skills. Just type “free online (your skill) games” into your browser and check out the pages of results! You’ll need to preview them first, because some may require responses that are beyond your child’s capability (i.e.: a child with motor issues might get frustrated with a timed game).

Switch out modes if possible, so that kids get practice at the material in lots of ways. It’s more interesting and it will help them generalize the information later. Sometimes we read a book, sometimes we read the captions on the bottom of a movie (by the way, it’s a great idea to leave the closed captioning ON on your television if you have budding readers at your house and especially if your kids are working on developing rate/fluency!), sometimes we read the words on road signs or cereal boxes.

3) Make learning meaningful. Give it a purpose, a function. Transferring walnuts from one bowl to another is (y-a-w-n) BORing fine motor work. Transferring wrapped candies into goodie bags to pass out to trick-or-treaters gives fun purpose to the same task.

4) Keep practice short but make it often. Do you know what an amazing opportunity sits in front of you if your child needs supervision during toileting? My daughter has memorized so many things during toilet time—sight words, spelling rules, math facts, the order of the planets, anatomy of a fish, you name it! We keep flashcards for memory work on a shelf above the toilet. Working through them 5 minutes at a time, 5 – 6 times a day makes for a great schedule!

If toilet time isn’t an option at your house, try to find some other daily ritual that lends itself to short bursts of practice...often. How about 5 minutes of practice at the end of meals? Waiting for the school bus? In the therapy waiting room?

5) Relax and have fun! Learning isn’t a race. What your child doesn’t learn today, he can learn tomorrow. Take a deep breath—it’s really okay. If something just isn’t sinking in, come back another day, another month and give it a fresh go. Parents have a lot more leeway in this area than the school does so at home, especially, relax. Learning should happen for a lifetime, and so if it something doesn’t click today, you have all that lifetime to keep working on it.  

Learning at home can be very rewarding and lots of fun to boot! Here's a challenge for you...think about what might you help your child learn at home. Did you find any ideas here that might make it successful? Is there something I missed that other parents would benefit knowing about? Be sure to let us know what you are doing!

Also, take a look at Barbara’s blog carnival at TherExtras. She’s asked parents to share what they taught their children...you might get some really terrific ideas there!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Get Inspired for Summer Learning Fun!

May is winding down, leaving just a few weeks until glorious summer vacation! This gives parents a couple weeks before school dismisses to plan learning activities to keep our kids’ minds active and skills sharp over the summer. Are you ready?

Please don’t feel overwhelmed! Just a brief activity, every day if you possibly can, will go far to keep the Boredom Monster at bay.

Our family will be staying home this year with our farm critters. And the cost of gas makes all but the shortest of day trips cost-prohibitive. How will we make the most of those lazy summer days? You are welcome to take a peek at our plans...

Every year we have an informal family “summer school.” Not only does it benefit the kids, it fills my deep teacher-longing, since I’m not in a classroom much these days. In fact—true confession—I thrive on this. It’s sick, I know, I know...

But PLEASE don’t worry if you don’t have such an inclination! If you can steal just one tiny idea from these overly-ambitious plans, you will go far in helping keep your kids’ summer interesting.

For any families considering homeschooling, summers are a great way to dip your toes in the water and see if it’s a fit.

Typically, our girls start dropping eager hints about what they’d like to study along about January. Some years they agree on one topic; other years each has launched off on her own.

Some of the topics we’ve studied in the past include:

·        Animal studies--dogs, bugs, emus and penguins

·        Weather

·        Detectives

·        Units inspired by books, like the year we learned about pirates and read an all-time favorite, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. Another summer we did a history study based on the Samantha books series from American Girl.

·        Researching the area or state where we’ll be vacationing

·        The possibilities are as endless as your creativity.

Mount Saint Helens,
May 18, 1980
USGS photo

This year, the girls were a little slow to come up with topics, so my husband suggested we study volcanoes and visit Mt. Saint Helens. What a great idea!

What will we be learning?

·        SCIENCE:  That’s a given! We can learn about plate tectonics and seismology and volcanoes and environmental recovery. I’m on the lookout for some good experiments on pressure and release, if you know of any. 

·        TECHNOLOGY:  In addition to learning how seismographs and other instruments work, the kids can develop their computer research skills. I’d love to see them sharpen their PowerPoint skills...maybe they could simulate an interactive display that you might find at the volcano’s visitor center...hmmm.

·        HISTORY:  Not only is the recent history of Mt. Saint Helens interesting (I was driving home from college the day it blew), but some of the famous blasts of the past (Vesuvius, Pompeii, Pinatubo...) are pretty mind-boggling and history-changing. What about the economic impact of the recent volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland? 

·        READING:  This is an area where free choice reigns. What matters most to me is that my kids are reading daily.

We’ll sign up for the public library teen reading program. My older daughter has already signed up with our state Talking Book and Braille Library program; their prize for reading 1000 minutes is a blank cartridge for the new digital book players! Wahoo!

Of course, there is plenty of topical information the kids will be reading for projects, so they’ll get practice reading non-fiction. But most of all, I want them reading literature they love.

·        WRITING:  Some years this is directed; some years it is personal choice. There are a few project-related writing activities I have in mind (a brochure for Mt. Saint Helens, a script to go with that interactive PowerPoint for the visitor center), but mostly I want to give time for free writing and journaling.

 

When they were younger, we made stacks of books that the girls re-read throughout the year. What a fun way to keep the memory of summer alive during dreary winter days!

 

·        MATH:  I love summers for having time to close up those gaps in math understanding! Without naming any specific math curriculum our elementary school used, we’ll just say my kids still have gaping holes in their math concepts and skill mastery.

      It’s a great time for mom to pull out old-fashioned math instruction. Call me a fuddy-dud, but these tried and true techniques taught me math...which is more than I can say for the “experimental” system my girls grew up with. Enough said.

 

Some years, math fits well under the umbrella of our topic. Other years, not so much. I don’t worry terribly about it.

There are so many practical applications of math around home: multiplying fractions as we double a recipe, calculating seed coverage in the garden, estimating costs as we plan our trip to Mt. Saint Helens...

·        THE ARTS:  Ooooh, I’ve been waiting until my girls were old enough to tackle frame animation...a volcanic explosion would be a very exciting culminating project!  

For instant projects for younger kids, there are great collections of art and craft books at the library. I’m especially fond of the Williamson Kids Can! Book series (here’s one and another one).

My youngest is heading into a phase of life where test-taking strategies take on new importance, so that will be a subplot in our little volcano story. Much of that can dovetail with math.

This may all sound ambitious, but don’t be fooled. We only try to hit a couple subjects every day. Most days only see about 60 – 90 minutes spent on “summer school” (and some days we skip all together).  Once in awhile, the girls will get so caught up in a project that they spend most of the day on it!

A new wrinkle for me is that this is the first summer I’ll be blogging. While I know it will be hard to post regularly, I’d love to share some of the ways we adapt activities and materials to make them accessible. Maybe that will inspire similar summer learning projects for you and your darlings to enjoy.

Above all, I want families to enjoy learning this summer! It can be spontaneous and delightful. It can be delightfully planned. Whatever fits your summer style, I hope you will find lots of ways to keep your kids’ minds stimulated.

What do you do with your kids over the summer to keep their minds active? Please do share in the comments below! I can always use a good idea or three...and our other friends can too!

SEN Teacher...it's for EVERYBODY!

One of the greatest finds on the Web for educational materials is SEN Teacher.  If you have never visited this incredible site, then today is your lucky day! SEN Teacher was developed for special educators, but it has a goldmine of goodies that are extremely helpful at home and in general ed classrooms as well. I used this site a lot when homeschooling and with general ed students as well as my kids on IEPs. Did I mention that it is free?

Home screen for SEN Teacher

The site is very well organized; so much so that it is rather pointless for me to take you on a “guided tour.”

The printables sections alone are amazing resources that makes this site worth your time. The activities meet the learning needs of students at every difficulty level, so even high school math teachers will find some hidden gems in the math section. Even worksheets that look at first glance to be elementary can be customized to reinforce some pretty challenging skills.

I love, love, love the math worksheets, which are fully customizable. Even coin values are customizable for various countries, from USA to Euros to Australian coins. There are 26 different customizable printables for math alone! The clock and money worksheets are some of the clearest to read that you will find on the Internet.

One of my very favorite math activities with second graders uses the Number Square worksheet. Print up the page using only a partial fill (50% or 75% of spaces left empty) and have students fill in the blank spaces. You can also set it to skip count by 2’s, 5’s, or other increments (great for older students practicing multiplication facts). Once the kids are good at this, cut the sheets apart into jigsaw shapes along the lines. Children fill in the blanks of their own piece and then work together in small groups to fit the pieces to a complete a full table.

Number Square set to 50% fill.

The literacy printables include lots of fine motor and handwriting practice, as well as early phonics and site word skills. Again, you can customize most of these sheets to fit the needs of your particular students

The “other” printables has some things you must see if you need picture cards (for any reason, but especially for symbol communicators). Check out the AAC Photo Cards, which is a truly fast and customizable card printing tool. It is one of my all-time favorites for photo image symbol cards because of its ease of use and limitless library. Just type in the words you want on the sheet and SEN Teacher searches through a half-dozen copyright free sources for high quality images to match. If you don’t like a particular image (say, the background is too cluttered), you can repeat the search until the program opens an image you like. You can narrow the searches tightly too; don’t settle for “dog” or “goat” when what you want is “Golden Retriever” or “Saanen.” The AAC Photo Card search can handle your very specific request! Oh yes, it also comes with pre-authored sets if you just need a quick group of “farm” or “school” words.

AAC Photo Cards allow you to create photo symbol cards
to meet very specific criteria in a matter of seconds

If I could change one thing about the AAC Photo Cards, it would be the ability to assign a mix of border colors on a single page. But you can get around this a bit by putting all nouns on one page (print with orange borders), verbs on another (print with green), etc.

On this “print other” tab, you will also find a number of emotions activities using realistic photos. I have a bit of a stretch seeing how a few of the expressions show the assigned emotion, but overall, it’s a great resource for children who need practice at reading expressions.

You will find fabulous online resources through the “web links” tab, including information on various disabling conditions, additional educational resource links, and a collection excellent special needs sites.

The “downloads” tab shares dozens of free games and other resources that can be downloaded to reinforce any number of learning areas, including math, computers, science, communication, art, and other areas. It’s a great place to find games for extra practice…have fun looking them over!

SEN Teacher is one of those amazing resources that you will wonder how you ever lived without. Even if you are a parent looking for some great activities to reinforce the academic and social skills your child is learning at school, this is a valuable link to add to your Favorites bar!

Have a lovely weekend,

Rose-Marie