family
teACH Them well
Improve education at home with these simple activities
T
he scent of peanut butter sandwiches and the sound of backpacks thwacking the laundry room floor are again upon us. Whether your children are just beginning the school experience or entering the rather intimidating grades of first, middle or high school, there are plenty of teachable moments at home that can enhance your child’s education.
Build learning into your day
Laurie Calta, director of operations at The Goddard School in Round Lake, says that there are boundless opportunities to link classroom learning with easy and
enjoyable activities at home or around the neighborhood. “We encourage all of our parents to work on the foundations of reading by reading out loud, doing repetitious reading and phonetical awareness,” the early childhood educator says. “Easy things, like having the child find all the ‘m’ letters for letter recognition and sight words like ‘the,’ ‘she’ and ‘he’ — have kids point them out in magazine articles or books, and you’ll be building that foundation for reading.” Calta suggests presenting these activities as a fun game as opposed to, “Now we’re working on phonetics, kid.” Reading games can spill into other activities such as art projects, too.
I By JACKY RUNICE
I