If you are (or will be) teaching your child to read, do yourself a favour and go to www.starfall.com - it is an excellent site with programs that teach reading, right from the alphabet, through phonetics, to fluent reading. It also has loads of other lessons like calendars and stuff.
Just another reason I am addicted to the Internet.
Showing posts with label Homeschooling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homeschooling. Show all posts
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Reading update
So, we have begun teaching Nikhil to read.
It is a very telling sign when the second letter your child learns to recognise is M... for MacDonald's!
When I decided to undertake this task, I printed out all the letters, capitals and lower case, in a good, simple font. I painstakingly cut out each letter and taped them, capital letter next to lower case, all over the dining room and kitchen, and ignored the strange looks from visitors (we've had lots of people coming to give us removals quotes).
Nikhil looked at them a few times, then proceeded to tear them off the furniture and eat them. Well, at least he's, ahem, taking them in...
But he has been learning well, albeit from other sources. He can now recognise 19 letters, and will key in the correct letter on the keyboard if you ask him to. He can also recognise a few numerals. The most valuable tool has been a program called Baby Smash, where the child can bash away at the keyboard and the letters appear large and bright, with a voice saying what it is. Function keys yield coloured shapes, so he now knows shapes like hexagons and trapezoids. Another great tool is a play dough set with alphabet cutters that my sister gave him for his birthday.
As much as I tried to avoid the "A for apple, B for ball" method, all the alphabet books we've found teach it that way. It's a problem, especially at this age. Nikhil will see a numeral, and say "Four! Four for...? Mommy, what's four for?" as if it's a letter to start a word with. Also, he knows D is for Dad, and B is for Brad, so he says "B for Dad!" and I'll have to say, "No, B for Brad." Then you can see his little brain thinking "That's what I said. Brad, Dad, same person!"
The great thing about teaching kids is that they are so eager to learn, they will force you to teach them. I have to admit, I've slacked off a bit recently (it does get tedious singing the alphabet song so many times) but Nikhil hasn't taken a break. We'll be rushing around at the mall and he'll point to a sign and say "Look! S!". Then I stop myself and point out the other letters to him.
And it's that excitement that has me wanting to homeschool my kids. The joy of learning something new, the satisfaction of discovering a proficiency - that's something I want to keep alive for all their lives.Because once they love learning, the subject matter is unimportant - they will always be able to learn whatever skill they need in life.
It is a very telling sign when the second letter your child learns to recognise is M... for MacDonald's!
When I decided to undertake this task, I printed out all the letters, capitals and lower case, in a good, simple font. I painstakingly cut out each letter and taped them, capital letter next to lower case, all over the dining room and kitchen, and ignored the strange looks from visitors (we've had lots of people coming to give us removals quotes).
Nikhil looked at them a few times, then proceeded to tear them off the furniture and eat them. Well, at least he's, ahem, taking them in...
But he has been learning well, albeit from other sources. He can now recognise 19 letters, and will key in the correct letter on the keyboard if you ask him to. He can also recognise a few numerals. The most valuable tool has been a program called Baby Smash, where the child can bash away at the keyboard and the letters appear large and bright, with a voice saying what it is. Function keys yield coloured shapes, so he now knows shapes like hexagons and trapezoids. Another great tool is a play dough set with alphabet cutters that my sister gave him for his birthday.
As much as I tried to avoid the "A for apple, B for ball" method, all the alphabet books we've found teach it that way. It's a problem, especially at this age. Nikhil will see a numeral, and say "Four! Four for...? Mommy, what's four for?" as if it's a letter to start a word with. Also, he knows D is for Dad, and B is for Brad, so he says "B for Dad!" and I'll have to say, "No, B for Brad." Then you can see his little brain thinking "That's what I said. Brad, Dad, same person!"
The great thing about teaching kids is that they are so eager to learn, they will force you to teach them. I have to admit, I've slacked off a bit recently (it does get tedious singing the alphabet song so many times) but Nikhil hasn't taken a break. We'll be rushing around at the mall and he'll point to a sign and say "Look! S!". Then I stop myself and point out the other letters to him.
And it's that excitement that has me wanting to homeschool my kids. The joy of learning something new, the satisfaction of discovering a proficiency - that's something I want to keep alive for all their lives.Because once they love learning, the subject matter is unimportant - they will always be able to learn whatever skill they need in life.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Empowerment!
After months of waiting for Brad to set up our family website with a blog for me, I discovered Blogger, and set up my blog in a matter of minutes. I feel so empowered by the internet!
This is my very last week of maternity leave. I go back to work next Tuesday when Ariane is only 9 weeks old. Although it will be difficult to leave her, I feel a lot more relaxed this time than I did when I first left Nikhil at home. Ariane has been getting acquainted with her nanny Gertrude, and I've accepted that Gertrude is as good a caregiver as any, barring myself, Brad or one of our mothers.
Ariane is growing at a rapid rate. I don't remember Nikhil growing so quickly. She is alert and interested in her surroundings, and smiles at me when I talk to her. If she is with Brad or Gertrude and I walk into her sight, she starts crying for me. It's very flattering.
Nikhil is a typical almost-2-year-old sponge. He is absorbing information at an alarming rate. This morning he sang the whole of "Sing a song of sixpence" to me, and I haven't sung it to him for at least 3 weeks. He's been memorising the text of the books I read to him, and then he points at the words and "reads" the book to me. And he can now sing the entire alphabet song without help. So I decided it's not too early to start teaching him to read.
Yes, I know he's not quite two years old. And no, I don't think I'm pushing him too hard, despite the fact that our public school system only gets children to learn to read at age seven. He is interested in books, he's picking up information faster than I can supply it, and he's more than ready to learn the shapes of letters.
All the research I've done suggests that teaching children to read phonetically is superior to getting them to just recognise entire words from the outset. So I will be following the sequence of teaching him the alphabet song, then teaching him to recognise and name letters ("cee" as opposed to "cuh for cat") so that he doesn't learn to associate C with Cat. Then moving on to learning the sounds - A gives "a" as in apple, "aw" as in ball, "ay" as in cake, "aa" as in arm, etc. And finally combining sounds into words like hat, mat, bat. That's how I learnt to read, but apparently not how the American school system teaches it.
As for Brad, he is DEATHLY ill. He can't get out of bed, cook, or do much for the kids. Poor guy, he's come down with the potentially fatal Congested Sinuses. I hope he feels better soon, but my prognosis is that he will have repeated attacks of a similar nature until Ariane is a little older and I can give him more attention.
This is my very last week of maternity leave. I go back to work next Tuesday when Ariane is only 9 weeks old. Although it will be difficult to leave her, I feel a lot more relaxed this time than I did when I first left Nikhil at home. Ariane has been getting acquainted with her nanny Gertrude, and I've accepted that Gertrude is as good a caregiver as any, barring myself, Brad or one of our mothers.
Ariane is growing at a rapid rate. I don't remember Nikhil growing so quickly. She is alert and interested in her surroundings, and smiles at me when I talk to her. If she is with Brad or Gertrude and I walk into her sight, she starts crying for me. It's very flattering.
Nikhil is a typical almost-2-year-old sponge. He is absorbing information at an alarming rate. This morning he sang the whole of "Sing a song of sixpence" to me, and I haven't sung it to him for at least 3 weeks. He's been memorising the text of the books I read to him, and then he points at the words and "reads" the book to me. And he can now sing the entire alphabet song without help. So I decided it's not too early to start teaching him to read.
Yes, I know he's not quite two years old. And no, I don't think I'm pushing him too hard, despite the fact that our public school system only gets children to learn to read at age seven. He is interested in books, he's picking up information faster than I can supply it, and he's more than ready to learn the shapes of letters.
All the research I've done suggests that teaching children to read phonetically is superior to getting them to just recognise entire words from the outset. So I will be following the sequence of teaching him the alphabet song, then teaching him to recognise and name letters ("cee" as opposed to "cuh for cat") so that he doesn't learn to associate C with Cat. Then moving on to learning the sounds - A gives "a" as in apple, "aw" as in ball, "ay" as in cake, "aa" as in arm, etc. And finally combining sounds into words like hat, mat, bat. That's how I learnt to read, but apparently not how the American school system teaches it.
As for Brad, he is DEATHLY ill. He can't get out of bed, cook, or do much for the kids. Poor guy, he's come down with the potentially fatal Congested Sinuses. I hope he feels better soon, but my prognosis is that he will have repeated attacks of a similar nature until Ariane is a little older and I can give him more attention.
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