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| Children learn
by doing and activities at school and at home should reflect that. Parents
should become active participants in their child's education. Talking,
sharing, observing, investigating, and comparing should not just be part of
every school day but should also be practiced at home.
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Language Arts |
- Talk to your child and ask for
opinions. Share your ideas and listen to the child's thoughts.
- Read to and with your child. Share
books, magazines, newspaper, mail; read aloud, listen and read together;
encourage the child to "read" stories from pictures; discuss important
information about the story.
- Share with your child nursery rhymes,
poems and songs. Encourage "word play" where children move sounds around
in words to create nonsense words or rhymes.
- Make a game with word families.
- Encourage a print-rich environment.
Involve your child with the print around him or her. Look at signs, read
grocery store labels, investigate maps, benefit from "junk mail".
- Find out what is being studied at
school and check out books or materials to share and learn about at home.
- If your child shows little interest
in reading books, discover what is most interesting to him or her and find
magazines, books or other materials on that topic.
- Help your child think critically
about a news report or a television ad. Does the report state the facts?
Is the information clearly understood?
- Provide opportunities to write. Make
grocery lists, write letters to a friend of family.
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Mathematics |
- Mathematics is built around patterns.
Look for, discuss and practice making patterns: patterns founds on leaves,
flowers, etc. Create original patterns with art materials.
- Provide many opportunities to sort
objects and tell why the objects are sorted in that way (keys, buttons,
bottle tops, etc.)
- Problem solving is a skill needed
throughout life. Encourage your child to find answers to his or her
questions: think about how to solve the problem; think about the best
answer, etc.
- Play math games with your child.
Talk about more and less, the same, longer, heavier, how much, or how
many. At the grocery store, guess what the total will be. Let your child
figure out how much change you will get. Use names of days, months, and
seasons.
- Include your child in cooking at
home, using standard measurement terms, such as a dozen, ounces,
tablespoon, cup, etc.
- Estimate and predict with your child:
how many cups will fill the bowl? How long will it take to fill the
bathtub with water?
- Provide opportunities for your child
to mentally calculate math problems.
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Second Language Acquisition |
- Talk to your child and ask for
opinions. Read a book or watch a television program with your child
- Try some pre-writing activities with
your child. Reading, discussing, making lists, thinking about topics,
drawing or painting, taking about personal ideas or experiences.
- Encourage your child to write more
than stories. Children can create a new verse for a favorite song; they
can write poetry about a family activity; they can create lists of word
families like fall, ball, tall.
- After watching a movie or a
television show, ask your child to re-tell some facts about the program.
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Science |
- Scientific thinking involves
observing, making guesses or predicting future outcomes, investigating or
experimenting, and drawing conclusions from results of investigations or
experiments.
- Encourage your child to observe
things in the environment as you go on neighborhood excursions, grocery
stores, post office, park, airport, carnivals, museums, and so on. Compare
objects and events.
- Sort items such as food items to
organize a shelf, cabinet or pantry. Sort laundry before washing. Gather
items in the environment for collections, such as leaves, rocks, etc.
- Involve your child in predicting,
investigating, and drawing conclusions. How long does it take for the ice
to melt?
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Social Studies |
- Establish responsibilities for your
child at home. Make a list together and expect those responsibilities to
be carried out consistently. Connect privileges or lack of privileges
with responsibilities and actions.
- Develop rules with your child. Try
to help your child see connections between rules at home and laws for the
citizens of your city or state.
- Take part in celebrations in the city
related to cultures other than your own. Black History Month, Chinese New
Year, Cinco de Mayo, and other special celebrations offer a chance to
learn more about cultures of others.
- Involve your child in the news.
Watch and read information together which connects actions in other parts
of the world with events directly related to your family, city or state.
- Talk about geographic topics with
your child: share map reading on family trips; discuss directions as you
drive to school or the store; encourage your child to create original maps
of how to get to school, where a treasure can be found, or how to
rearrange the bedroom furniture.
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