I received these questions in an email the other day and thought you might be interested in my reply, since both answers can be a bit controversial. What do you think?
1-I have an almost 4 year old daughter who loves to do school! She is constantly asking to do her little preschool workbook, and any bit of time we spend together in her little lessons are never long enough for her…she is always ready for more! Do I pace her with what I think she should be doing, or do I follow her lead and let her continue until she says she’s done? Also, I should mention that she goes to preschool outside of our home 3 mornings a week.
2-My second grader, who spent the first two years of her schooling in public school, loves to read and is a strong reader. I intended to start her off somewhere in the middle of Jessie Wise’s “The Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading” to just to make sure that she knew the rules of reading, although she appears to know many of them by how she reads to me. Wondering if you have any suggestions as to how to assess her or to quickly skim through Jessie’s book to be able to catch any spots that might trip her up a bit.
Thanks for listening…and I am loving the 6 month online course!
Here’s my reply:
Thank you for writing. Great questions! And that is wonderful that you have such eager learners.
I, too, have an almost 4 year old daughter who loves to “do school”. Here is what I have done with my children at that age. I have put together a preschool box and filled it with all kinds of educational things, including matching games, fine motor skill activities, some art supplies, workbooks, coloring books, alphabet and counting games, puzzles, etc. She is able to work on most of these activities herself, but needs help with some of them. I get out her “school box” when the other kids are doing school work. I carve out a chunk of time to work directly with her on pre-reading skills, fine motor skills, counting, sorting, matching, puzzles, etc. She has access to this box of educational goodies during school time at our home and then before lunch time, we put it away. School is over, but that doesn’t mean that learning stops. I will still have her count the number of plates we need for dinner, or tell me what letter a word starts with, etc. The reason for the limited time at formal school activities is two-fold – 1. keeps her interest high, and 2. saves your sanity. Let’s look at those again. If she can keep you busy all day long with school lessons, then she may eventually begin to lose interest. Plus you won’t have time to work on the other tasks that you have to do. So keep it short and sweet in order to keep interest high and sanity intact.
About your 2nd grader… If she is a strong reader, I would not use “The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading.” It’s not that I have anything against the book – we have used it ourselves. But she doesn’t really need it. There is no reason to drill phonics instruction when kids know how to read. Here’s why… Spelling rules are the same as phonics rules, only backwards. So, just shift into spelling and teach the phonics rules that way. That will be much more satisfying for both of you.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Take Care,
Terri
This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
