learning activities

Early Reading:

Reading is the foundation for education. It will be your child's life-long passport to discovery! Have patience with your child as they learn to read. Age of readiness and pace of understanding vary. Relish the time together. Hearing your child read their first sentence aloud is a milestone you'll treasure!

• Research demonstrates the time-tested benefits of phonics-based reading instruction. One excellent program I've used is through Sonlight Curriculum, a Christian literature-based curriculum company.

• Early reader books progress from beginner to more advanced levels (typically levels 1, 2, & 3). Seek out fun and engaging stories. Some timeless classics are must-haves: the Frog and Toad series, Dr. Seuss books, Little Bear, Owl at Home, and Mouse Soup.

• Visit your local library. Children's librarians are available to offer guidance for young readers.

• Sight words can be practiced with flash cards and repetition. Make a game of this with prizes.

• Develop sight-word Bingo cards and game boards for a family game night.

• Play Scrabble at your child's level of ability.

• Have a scavenger hunt for objects in the same phonics family (HAT, CAT, MAT, etc.).

• Praise small accomplishments with excitement! The more emphasis you place on the importance of your child's reading achievements, the more they'll want to read.

MAth:

Children naturally have different degrees of interest and ability in math. I've known children who love the reliable logic of calculations and others who struggled to grasp basic concepts. For most young children, concrete visualization can help to establish a strong foundation to build on. Children on both ends of the spectrum will eventually be required to complete higher-math courses. Some high school students may even obtain college credit with AP courses.

• From your child's earliest days, consider creative ways to make math relevant by applying it to daily tasks like cooking, grocery shopping, money counting, using an analog clock, measuring driving distance, etc.

• When early math instruction begins, invest in a set of manipulatives, a learning clock, and play money, to give your child a visual representation of their math problems, which can feel abstract to some students.

• Create a game out of memorizing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts with flash cards and prizes.

• Cut out colored houses from foam or mat board and label each house with an address number. Affix enough small velcro squares to accommodate the pairs of accompanying "occupants" that combine to equal each house's address number.

• Seek out some math-based educational board games you can play with your child.

• Use graph paper to help your child line up math problems. Children with sensory aversions often find red paper less alerting than white.

• Early childhood math may not require the use of a standardized curriculum. By third grade, most students require a dedicated program. Decide which math curriculum style aligns with your child's needs. I have used an online subscription curriculum called Teaching Textbooks that covers grades 3 through 12. Its interactive online instruction is taught by the teachers who authored the program. It provides fun daily lessons, assignments, and tests, as well as automatic grading.

• High school students benefit from a personal finance course as they near adulthood. Dave Ramsey offers an excellent program, Foundations in Personal Finance: Homeschool Edition, if you are interested in filling this need.

Handwriting:

Handwriting has fallen on hard times in public schools. Sadly, some have removed cursive handwriting instruction entirely. Handwriting is important for more than the ability to sign our names. It is a necessary skill to read anything written in cursive, such as the original script of America's founding documents. Remarkably, when children practice handwriting, it has a direct impact on learning. Research shows that the brain favors writing (not typing) information down for the best long-term retention.

• Invest in a high quality handwriting curriculum for young children. Handwriting Without Tears is an excellent program created by an occupational therapist. The several-year program provides necessary foundational skills.

• Provide pencil grips if your child is struggling with holding their pencil properly.

• Purchase early handwriting paper for practice on large lines, conducive to young children's developing fine motor skills.

• Implement frequent (1 to 2 times weekly) brief copy work tasks on handwriting paper. Copying sentences from choice age-appropriate literary sources trains the child to recognize correct grammar, spelling, and sentence structure, and sets the stage for developing excellent written communication skills.

Literature & writing—free diagram!

The best method for building great writers is to build great readers—the two cannot be separated. Instill a love of reading early. Read books beyond the child's ability aloud regularly. Discuss them. Read as much classic literature as possible. Study it. Prager U has compiled an excellent classic reading list by grade level.

Traditional writing instruction progressively incorporates many different types of writing. Mid-elementary students often begin writing book reports. As they progress, narrative short stories, research papers, and descriptive, expository, and persuasive essays are explored. Reading and writing poetry is an often overlooked element in education, but I urge you to invest time in this important endeavor. It's a worthwhile opportunity to enhance a child's overall writing skill, creativity, and emotional intelligence—and it's fun!

PARTS OF A STORY & PROGRESSION:

Begin writing instruction by teaching young children informally about the parts and progression of a story. The parts include: characters, setting, plot, conflict, and theme. In simplest terms for young children, the progression includes a beginning, middle, and end. As children grow, progression of character and story arcs become the focus. Your young child's favorite comic strip is a simple resource you can use to explain these basic concepts. Reinforce their understanding by discussing the story parts and progression of children's books. 

THE WRITING PROCESS:

Incorporating age-appropriate assignments that instill an understanding of the writing process throughout a child's education will produce life-long skilled communicators.

Five steps to writing well:

1. PREWRITING: Brainstorm ideas, create an outline, and define purpose, audience, and key points through notes, an idea map, or research.

2. ROUGH DRAFT: Write a rough draft focusing on content and structure over grammatical perfection to capture the overall purpose. 

3. REVISION: Revise for organization, flow, clarity, and content (Tip: reading it aloud is helpful!).

4. EDITING: Correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice for precision and readability.

5. FINAL DRAFT: A polished, finished essay is worth the work! I like for students to maintain an annual portfolio of the year's writing assignments as a representation of their different types of writing and growth.

ESSAY STRUCTURE:

Activity Idea: To teach my elementary-aged son the basic structure of an essay, I created a visual representation of the essay sections. His assignment was to write a descriptive essay about his future dream house. Together, we created a diagram of a house (see image) on small poster-sized board. Each floor represented one part of the essay: the attic (introduction), three middle floors (3 body paragraphs), and the basement (conclusion). A street sign at the top displayed his make-believe address (essay title). This was a great introduction to the standard five-paragraph essay structure most commonly used in middle and high school writing classes.

CURRICULUM & BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:

• The Elements of Stylebook by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

• IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) Homeschool Curriculum is aptly named. They equip students to become highly-capable communicators.

• On Writing Well: The Essential Guide to Mastering Nonfiction Writing and Effective Communication book by William Zinsser

• SonlightCurriculum is a Christian literature-based K-12 curriculum company that provides an array of options ranging from all-in-one curriculum by grade level to a-la-carte choices. Their literature basis ensures an extensive selection of wonderful books with study guides to enhance meaningful discussions.