a conversation. Big city skyscrapers are just as exciting to a 5-year-old child as the wide open spaces of farmland, and vice versa. You can use the environment to increase your child’s vocabulary simply by talking about what you see.
Wander out into the weather if your preschooler enjoys it and if you dare. To most 4-year-olds, spring showers occur simply for entertainment. Put on your weather wraps and take a short walk in the rain. Smell the rain-soaked air and talk about what you feel, smell, and see; go outside, catch snowflakes on your mittens, and show your child how different each flake appears; snuggle up a safe distance from the window and watch a thunderstorm. Although going outside in a thunderstorm probably isn’t safe, you and your preschooler can still enjoy the show from inside.
Practice drawing circles, pictures, letters, and numbers if your child shows interest. Some preschoolers think that learning to write their name is very important. Others could care less. Go with the flow — you still have several years to make sure they’ve got their numbers and letters down.
Complete puzzles. Puzzles teach children to look at the way parts fit into a whole and they exercise a child’s thinking cap. Purchasing and teaching your child to complete a few board puzzles helps her learn about project completion and strategic thinking, as well.
Chapter 6
Covering the Elementary Years
IN THIS CHAPTER
Crayons, paper, glue, pencils, and Cheerios fill your days. You spend more time than you thought imaginable looking at ladybugs and subtracting with chocolate chips. (Wait! Don’t eat it yet. The math problem isn’t finished!) You must homeschool an elementary student.
Elementary students span such a wide range of processing, skills, and interests that categorizing them is hard. Some get a concept and take off, while others require slow and steady tutoring to get them over the humps. Keeping a watchful eye on your learner steers you past many a pitfall. When you know what your child is learning and how she takes in information, an occasional lack of understanding doesn’t stymie you because you see it coming.
Setting Out with Elementary Students
Students fill their elementary years with all kinds of learning. This is when your child learns the basics of living and builds the foundation of his education. He learns to make toast, read a book, multiply, and open a can of ravioli (skills we all need, right?).
A solid elementary foundation means that as your little one grows, he should tackle the upper grades with ease. Beginning with basic math, reading, history, science, and social studies, and adding on any subjects that you want your child to learn (as well as those that your state law might require), you guide your learner into an impressive body of knowledge by the time he finishes sixth grade. Even you may be surprised at how much he knows!
Between the ages of 5 and 12, children amass an amazing amount of knowledge about all sorts of things. (Of course, some of it we wish they didn’t pick up so readily, but who’s counting?) This is the time to introduce your child to all kinds of information, be it historical, scientific, mathematical, or whatever.
Because children often learn best by doing, hands-on experiences provide the most understanding. You want to teach your child about inclines for math or science? Grab a handful of small race cars and a sheet of cardboard or a large book, and practice racing the cars down the surface when it’s held at an angle or propped against something else to create a slope. Later, your child may forget what inclines are called, but she won’t forget what they do. (Chapter 29 talks more about learning with toys and games.)
These are the cut-and-paste years when children make a dizzying number of things from construction paper. They learn to tie their shoes, and they happily reset the combination lock on your briefcase. Oops! That one wasn’t quite on the list. Congratulations anyway.
Exploration also fills the elementary years. From the backyard to the neighborhood corner, the world provides a wealth of objects to explore. Mayflies or June bugs on the window become a reason for excitement with younger children, while older ones delight in turtles and frogs. Encouraging these interests and the excitement of discovery is one of the most important things that you do as a homeschooler. Sometimes encouragement is as simple as pointing out half-hidden denizens of the wild on a walk or steeling yourself when your 11-year-old proudly drags home a garter snake for you to appreciate. (Yes, honey. It’s lovely. It really is. Can it live outside now?)
Learning through Language Arts: Reading and Grammar
Nope. You’re not finished with schooling after you teach them to read. However, after you teach your first child to read, you’ll feel like you can teach her anything. It’s not that teaching a child to read is difficult — after all, most of us learned it with or without educational assistance. It does, however, require patience and the ability to stick with a project until you see results.
Nothing beats reading to your child to interest him in books. Letting him see that you read follows as a close second, and may be even more important in the long run. As we all know too well, it’s not what we say that the children catch, so often as what we do.
It’s as easy as A, B, C
When do you teach a child to read? If he asks you to teach him, then do it. I made the mistake of putting my young daughter off for six months because I thought she was too young to read. Actually, all I did was underestimate her ability to trudge through a project until its completion (now I know), and deny her six months’ pleasure reading time. Bad mom. No biscuit.
Many books promise to teach your child to read. All you really need is access to a public library and a list of the various phonics rules that you can find in the back of the book Why Johnny Can’t Read by Rudolf Flesch. Regardless of what the educational theory of the week may declare, reading happens when you apply the sounds of words to the symbols that we call letters. Some children figure it out on their own, while others need to be shown the code.
If you want a more organized program, you probably want a reading curriculum. Here are a few tried-and-true teach-your-child-to-read programs on the market.
Alpha-Phonics:
