The aim of homework is for children to be more independent in their learning as well as review what they have learned during the day.
In my opinion though, homework is never more important than living life to the fullest.
I meet many parents who are so hooked up by homework time that it takes priority on the many privileged moments of a family life.
Spending an afternoon at the beach, going to the circus or to the birthday party is always more important than the homework routine in my opinion.
If your child likes reading then you’ve won half the battle towards him or her being motivated to learn.
Reading is learning in disguise.
It stimulates the mind, brings knowledge and it improves vocabulary and memory skills. Moreover unlike tablets and screens it allows us to be more focused and relaxed.
For many children though, the act of reading in itself is boring and tedious. That’s because they are still learning to be comfortable with it and have to spend a lot of energy into working out what the words are and understanding them.
Learning is not only about stocking a lot of information.
There usually is an ultimate purpose behind every learning endeavour.
If a child learns to ride a bicycle, the purpose might be to be able to go for a trip with his dad. It might be because he or she wants to be able to do like his/her friends. Or it might just be to feel the thrill of speed and the wind on their face.
If you learn to use the internet, the purpose may be to get access to any information when you need it. Or it might be to connect with friends who live overseas.
Learning at school is no different.
Except that most of the time, we hold the purpose for
Continue reading Do you model a great work life for your child?
Picture this scenario:
You are just back home from work wanting to have some time to unwind and relax but you know that you can’t because you need to tackle homework with your child straight away.
Of course, after saying a quick hello, your child is now nowhere to be found as he’d rather make himself forgotten right now.
You call him once, without any acknowledgement. Twice…. same result. By the third time, your voice has gone up one notch and you finally get “5 minutes” back. Of course, 5 minutes is never 5 minutes! Finally after a few more calls, you get up and get hold of your child threatening whatever you can to get him at the homework table.
No. I certainly don’t mean that you need to befriend every teacher your child will have, nor have lengthy conversations with him or her. I don’t mean either that you need to know every detail about his or her personal life.
What I mean is keep an attentive eye for the strengths of your child’s teacher.
There are lots of information that can be gathered just through the quick interaction with him or her – may it be in direct contact, via a message book or how your child talks about him or her.
What you want to pay attention to are those resources, character traits and strengths, that makes that particular teacher different from others.
Focusing on those will not only help your child see his teacher as resourceful, but will also allow for better communication with him or her should you encounter an issue in your child’s school pathway.
Most homework routine I hear about goes like this:
Mom shouts at kid from the back of the house ‘Get ready now, it’s time for homework!’ Then 10 mins later shouts again: ‘Time for homework now, come on!’ After a couple more ‘calling’ (with climbing intensity), the child will finally be-grudgingly come to sit with his books at the homework table.
Does your homework routine sound like this?
Well then, you need to spice it up!
The more fun you make putting homework into motion, the easier it will be for your child to get to it and enjoy it.
Continue reading A nifty trick to get homework started on a high note
In my last post I shared a few simple games that doesn’t require a lot of preparation and that can be adapted to many different learning situation.
This game here, Toss Up, does require some preparation and can be used to review a topic at the end of a chapter or unit your child is working on. It is one of these games that you can take the time to put together that you can then use many times for any subject or content.
Although the post describes it as a classroom game and with the aim of learning new content, you can easily adapt it for home to help your child revise any lesson.
Changes I would bring when playing this at home with one or two children only:
Often, when I suggest using games to improve learning, many parents first believe that coming up with a game for every learning situation is something very hard to do.
Well, first of all, every learning situation doesn’t require a game and games don’t have to be used every single time you want learning to take place.
Secondly, games are actually not that hard to come up with and are even sometimes very easy to prepare and set up.
Here are some games that you can actually adapted to many different learning situations and that are very easy to set up.
Continue reading Games that you can adapt to many learning situations
The first few days of school after a break or holiday can be strenuous for some children.
The rhythm goes from, let’s be honest, pretty much doing nothing all day and enjoying life to structured time tables, lots of thinking and concentration requested from them as well as a much more fast paced routine.
Of course, most children won’t articulate it in such a way, but they might show signs like being a little more irritable or cranky, or slower in doing everyday task, or just plain tired.
Be understanding and support them during these first few days by lifting some of the weight off their shoulders.
After that first week, they’ll have adapted to the school routine and they should be back to normal.
Games are great for learning!
They can help your child grasp and process concepts quickly and make the new connections last.
This is one of my main strategy to engage children and have fun while learning.
Having said that, lots of parents complain that they don’t always have the time to to prepare these games.
And true, it often requires some time to create some of the learning games from planning to finished output.
Have fun with learning 