KINGS RANSOM ANTIQUES HOME

Reviewing spelling is often a boring task for schoolchildren. Perhaps you remember having to make a sentence out of that day’s spelling words, a task which sometimes required almost herculean effort.

While today’s schools are somewhat more enlightened – your child might be asked to circle all the “ie” words she can find with a rainbow colored marker- spelling words remains a task most children (and their parents) dread.

If you’re the parent of a child who has to memorize 10 new spelling words by the day after tomorrow, you might be kind of stuck. If jumping out of the window of a small plane seems preferable to another night of drilling spelling words, then these 6 activities might cheer you up:

1. Crossword Puzzles

Although there are software programs that do this, it’s a lot more fun to do it on your own. Between making the clues and making the boxes for each word (you have to spell the words in order to get the right number of boxes!), your child will have plenty of practice with their spelling words.

2. Classification

In this game, you dictate groups of words. Your child has to cross out the word that doesn’t belong, and explain why it doesn’t fit in that category.

3. Creative Writing

Choose a picture from a magazine or a book. Have your child write a sentence or two about it using one of spelling words. Older children might choose to skip the picture; you can then have them write a story using the spelling words. You write once sentence, and they have to write the next one using a spelling word. Afterwards you read the whole story together.

4. Word jeopardy

This is a game of quick thinking. You say one word, and your child has to answer with a spelling word that’s related to the word you said. An easy example would be Thanksgiving: your child answers “t-u-r-k-e-y.” You can have your child give a synonym or an antonym, depending on the types of words they need to study.

This also works with more technical words, such as those you might have in science or history. For example, if you say “plant,” your child would answer s-y-n-t-h-e-s-i-s.

5. Riddles

The 7-10 year old age group especially enjoy this ancient pastime. Using a spelling word as the answer, you or your child try and think of a riddle that goes with it. There are the obvious (“What lives in a cave and hangs upside down? A b-a-t), or you can get really creative and think of some real knee slappers.

If you want to go really wild your child can make their own joke booklet: your child can illustrate it and print out, allowing them to review the words on their own next time.

6. Missing Words

Teaching your preschoolers can always be disguised by using fun activities. Here are two great ideas to increase their school readiness.

STORY TIME

TEACHING OBJECTIVE/BEFORE YOU BEGIN:

Story time can be extremely creative as you and your preschooler develop a made up story together. It can either be factual, such as “when you were first born—-” and then continuing on with all the things your child did as a baby and a toddler, or it can be totally fictitious such as ” One day a little piggie knocked on our door and wanted to come in—-”. When you print each sentence on the lined paper your preschooler will follow your actions with her eyes and see the words appear from left to right on the paper. When the story is finished decide on a title. Then write that title at the top of the page. Be sure to leave room to print the author line which should include by “your name” and by “your child’s name” under the title. As you read both the old favorite story book as well as the new one you just created, be sure you or she follows the words with a finger going from left to right under them. This is a great reading readiness activity.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

A favorite book

Lined writing paper

A pencil

You and your child’s imagination

ACTIVITY STEPS:

1.      Read your child’s favorite story to her.

2.       Encourage her to retell the story with your help.

3.      Explain to your child that now you can make up a story of your own with both of you using your imaginations.

4.      Start a story, writing it down as you go. Print the words carefully as you create them.

5.      Encourage your child to add new parts to the story, taking turns, and continue to create the story on paper.

6.      When finished, make up a title, add an author line, and read the new story to your child.

WHAT IS MISSING?

TEACHING OBJECTIVE/BEFORE YOU BEGIN:

Looking for what is missing in this activity is a great way to help your preschooler learn to look very carefully at things around him. When it’s time for him to learn to discriminate the differences in letters, looking for those small changes in the way a particular letter is formed may come more easily after he has practiced with larger pictures. As he begins to follow your skill at drawing simple pictures, his ability to make a recognizable picture should improve. Kids love to imitate what their parents and siblings are doing. He may also enjoy doing this activity with other children as well as with you.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

Lots of paper

Markers

ACTIVITY STEPS:

1.      Sit down at the table with your child and tell him that you’re going to play a funny game.

Many parents often find it difficult to make their child love and enjoy learning. However, these parents often forget the first two years of their child’s life. The child learns how to sit, crawl, stand, walk and talk among many other important and difficult things with little to no prodding by anyone. Nobody ever worried about a child being lazy and unwilling to learn in his early childhood. Hence, the question that we shall address in this article is how to nurture this natural love for learning and to allow it to grow beyond his early childhood.

As any parents of young children will know, children are naturally curious and have an in-built desire to learn everything about the world around them. Childhood education begins not in the classroom but in the everyday environment that the child grows up in. A child does not need to be instructed to find out about the complicated world around him and he does not need stars or good grades to motivate him to do so. He is excited and experimental and willing to try everything to learn anything. He can smell, touch, taste and throw the same object repeatedly just to find out everything about it. Thus, in his childhood education, parents should not be trying to help him to discover the love for learning for it is already in him. The role of parents here is to nurture and grow it so that it stays with the child beyond his early childhood.

And the best thing parents can do for their child in this early stage of their child development is to give them the space and room to explore their love for learning. Children know instinctively the best way to learn. And parents have to trust that their child will discover for themselves the best way to learn.

The worst thing a parent can say “that’s the wrong way!” It creates stress in the child. And to quote John Holt, “when we make children afraid, we stop learning dead in its track.” Young children do not respond well to stress in the early stages of their child development. The fear of failure and the intimidation of admonishment from their parents often make it difficult for them to enjoy learning. Instead of being willing to try anything to learn, a child often tries to protect himself by hiding his ignorance. Hence, stress does not motivate them to work harder; instead it causes them to bury their natural curiosity so as to avoid this negative feeling.

And as Albert Einstein wrote, “It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion.” Thus, parents should not be coercing their child into learning. Rather, their role as parent is to facilitate and encourage the process of learning. Hence, rather than holding the child’s hand in the learning process, the parent should give the child room to make mistakes. This allows the child to discover the best way for him to learn and at the same time avoid giving the child unnecessary stress in his learning process.

Gratitude is defined as a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation. We often attribute gratitude with our interpretation of positive things that have happened in our lives. An even more resilient skill is the ability to experience gratitude towards the more challenging experiences of our lives. Through these challenges, we learn and grow the most quickly. When we practice this way of viewing our lives, our challenges take on a new dimension. We feel less victimized and more powerful in learning important lessons. Introducing this view to our children will allow them to expanded their view of gratitude. Both practices of gratitude require practice to develop the skills of seeing the world slightly differently.

Like teaching our children to brush their teeth twice a day, practicing gratitude is a healthy habit and can take some dedication to cultivate. As many of us have observed, the younger we introduce new habits, the more easily they are integrated. Let’s face it, sometimes older children are more resistant to new suggestions and ideas from parents. Creating either a personal or family gratitude journal allows members of the family to take stock either weekly or daily in what has happened that they feel good about, proud about or excited about. Each member begins to look at and appreciate the little “happy” events instead of believing it has to be a big “happening” to make the cut. The journal can also include challenges of the week where your child was able to see what was learned in the process or can bring the challenge to the family and all can brainstorm possible alternative ways to look at the experience.

Here are a few ways to activate an Attitude of Gratitude:

1. Daily Gratitude Journal as mentioned in the video- if each person has one and once a week at a family meal each person gets to pick a few things they’d like to share from their journal. This is also the beginning of a beautiful family ritual. For older kids (here teens) just starting out who may feel resistant, we can “entice them ” (i.e. bribe them) to participate by using points per gratitude. Sometimes if they can earn a privilege by participating, they begin a habit through persuasion and find they actually like it.

2. Thank you notes. Helping your children learn to express their gratitude for things other’s give to them (tangible or intangible) with thank you notes. Help them develop skills where they find at least one reason they are grateful for the gift.

3. At special times of the year, writing notes to other members of the family about what they are grateful for in that person. Our family did this at Thanksgiving, and the effect was tremendous. Each member gave the other three members a personal note with a list of things they felt appreciative for in relation to this person. This not only allowed the people writing to grow their gratitude skills, but also allowed the person receiving the notes feel honored. This can be done for family birthdays, holidays, etc…