What Kind of a Teacher Does Your Child Want?

My school days were a very long time ago, yet I can still remember some of my teachers. There was my first grade teacher, Mrs. Clark, who I remember as a kindly, white-haired lady who employed creative methods for encouraging our participation and learning. Then there was my fourth grade teacher, whose name I can't remember, perhaps because she couldn't remember how to spell my name all year long. Not too encouraging, eh?

What about your school memories? What do you remember about the teacher you would have considered your favorite? You may not have considered why that teacher was your favorite, but those reasons can be important. A student's relationship with his teacher is a powerful component of his educational experience.

If we were to survey a group of children concerning the characteristics that they appreciate in a teacher, we would likely hear reasons such as:

• Friendly toward me
• Listens to me
• Doesn't yell at me
• Understands that learning can sometimes be hard
• Notices my efforts
• Cares about me
• Encourages me when I'm having trouble
• Understands that I'm not like everyone else
• Makes learning exciting

When you look at the situation from a child's perspective, this list makes sense. These are essentially the same qualities that you would want in a teacher if you were learning something new. Now if you consider your own child's perspective - coupled with the fact that he must live with the teacher (you!) - then the importance of a positive student-teacher relationship gains even greater significance.

If the feedback you are getting from your student leads you to think your teaching style may be more like your least favorite teacher, you can take steps to improve the situation. Consider the imfluence of your words and remarks, and endeavor to be more positive and empathetic. Listen to your child's frustrations, offer suggestions, and look for new ways to present the material that is causing your child difficulty. Pay attention and respond positively when your child tries hard, and gently encourage him to keep trying if he seems distracted.

What draws out your best effort? Encouragement draws out my best effort. What draws you alongside another person? Empathy does that for me. Tune in to your interaction with your child. Listen to your words, watch what your body language is conveying. Start with one area to improve and observe the changes in your child as you make improvements. I suspect you will enjoy the change in your relationship.

Kelly

Checklist for Reading Readiness

Learning to read is a significant milestone in a child's education. After all, it's the gateway to the worlds of books and print media. Some parents feel that they need to press their children to begin reading early - there are even programs to "teach" your baby to read (ask me about that later) - but I'd like to offer a checklist of sorts to help you evaluate your child's readiness to read. This is adapted from an article from All About Learning Press.

Print Awareness
__ Your child knows the proper way to hold a book.
__ Your child understands that books are read from front cover to back.
__ Your child understands that words and sentences are read from left to right.
__ Your child knows that words on the page can be read.

Phonological Awareness
__ Your child can rhyme words. If you say bat, your child can find a rhyming word like hat.
__ Your child can identify the separate words in a sentence.
__ Your child can clap syllables. If you say dog, your child knows to clap once. If you say umbrella, your child knows to clap three times.
__ Your child can identify the beginning sound in a word.
__ Your child can identify the ending sound in a word.

Letter Knowledge
__ Your child can recite the alphabet.
__ Your child recognizes the letters in their capital form.
__ Your child recognizes the letters in their lowercase form.
__ Your child points out familiar letters on signs, in stores, or on packages.

Listening Comprehension
__ Your child is able to retell a familiar story in his own words.
__ Your child can answer simple questions about a story.
__ Your child asks questions during read-alouds, such as Why did the elephant laugh?


Motivation to Read
While it can be difficult to determine whether a child is motivated to do something, your knowledge and observations of your child should help you. Motivation is a key factor in success with reading - some children are ready early, while others need more time to build the desire. Early exposure to reading aloud should help build this motivation. The following are all signs that your child is likely motivated to read and has achieved the understanding that reading is fun.
__ Does your child enjoy being read to, at least for short periods of time?
__ Does your child pretend to read or write?
__ Does your child frequently request read-aloud time and show enthusiasm for books?
__ Does your child often ask you what a word says that he sees on a sign or in a book?

Scoring the Checklist
If all or most of the boxes are checked, then I believe it is safe to say that your child is ready to learn to read. If there are some missing checkmarks, you have identified the areas that you should work on with your child.

Be a student of your child - tune in to his readiness rather than setting a schedule that satisfies the cultural "norm" or peer pressure of other parents you know. Working with your child's developmental readiness will lay the groundwork for much less stress in your educational endeavors.

Kelly

It's All About Spelling

We all have memories of spelling lessons - for some of us, spelling was easy, for some it was a chronic challenge.  I don't know why it worked that way, but I do know that spelling is important to our ability to communicate clearly.  Sure spell check is a helpful feature of word processors, but not everything we do will be electronic ... you have to write some things by hand, at least occasionally.
I've talked about learning styles and how we need to select our educational programs based on our children's learning styles.  So many of the spelling programs developed by curriculum companies seem to be directed to visual learners, but a few are designed to work with all learning styles.  All About Spelling is one of these, incorporating sight, sound and touch in multisensory lessons that involve the students physically.

All About Spelling is laid out in logical sequence, with each lesson building on the previous lesson.  Progression is based on mastery, to ensure that a solid foundation is established for success as the spelling words get harder.  Continual practice keeps that foundation firm and the concepts fresh.

The Basic Interactive Pack includes letter tiles, magnets, phonogram CD-ROM, and index divider cards - essential materials for using the program.  Each program level includes teacher's manual and student packets.

Don't choose the program level based on your child's grade level.  This program is designed to work from the foundation up, so you need to ensure you have that firm foundation.  It is recommended that those new to All About Spelling begin with Level 1.  However, you can start with Level 2 if your child

• has mastered the phonograms from a to z, plus ch, th, sh, ng, and ck - able to pronounce and spell them from dictation
• can segment words into their individual sounds
• can spell most 3-letter words, and
• can easily write simple sentences

Whether you have older students for whom you haven't found the right tool for spelling success, or you have younger students and are just getting started with spelling, All About Spelling may just be the answer you seek. If I were still teaching elementary students, I would be using this program.  How 'bout you?

Kelly

Had Your "Box Day" Yet?

Box Day? What's a "Box Day," you ask?

Well, I suppose this term is better known in Sonlighter circles - among those who use Sonlight Curriculum. It refers to the day that your Sonlight order is delivered and you discover a big box (or two) at your front door. If your timing is good, you might catch the FedEx man when he brings it, and you can ask him to bring it inside for you. That can save you some significant weightlifting.

If you have spent any time on the Sonlight Forums, you have probably seen posts where Sonlighters have shared their Box Day experiences and pictures. Though the environment may look different, the general features of the pictures are quite similar - stacks of books, smiling children either sitting among the stacks or draped on a couch with a selected book, jumping ahead of the reading schedule. In our early days with Sonlight, there was also a dusting of packing pellets which had to be gathered from the various places to which they clung. Nowadays, since Sonlight switched to using crushed paper to protect the books, there isn't as much involved in cleaning up after unpacking. Some families actually take the paper, smooth it out flat, fold it accordion-style, and set it aside for art projects. What a great way to recycle! I am going to start doing this to save paper for my grandchildren's artwork.

As I've spoken to several customers in recent weeks, I've begun to hear their stories ...

"I was floored by the Sonlight material [at the convention]. Flipping through the IG, it hit me that this is what I needed. Looking through the content, I realized that this is what my 6-year-old son needed!! My husband and I love the focus on world history and the people of the world that have not yet beenr eached with the Gospel ....We came home and ordered .... The box came. I was beside myself excited! Our 6 year old wasn't all that interested in the big white box. Until...I opened it. I am an 'inventory the box' kind of person. He came over to the rug where I was neatly piling the box. He pulled out one on Ancient Egypt and another and another. I watched his eyes get wide and excited. You know you've picked the right curriculum when this question immediately follows. 'WHEN can we start?! Do we HAVE to wait for August?' I haven't started our school year yet, but we are both very excited about what is in store." Elizabeth P, TN

"We have almost finished our first week of school and are really enjoying the program!" Jena H, FL

I'd love to hear your Box Day stories. Share them as a comment, or e-mail me at klutman@sonlight.com. Until then, I pray that your school year is a blessed one ....

Kelly

Turn a Road Trip into Geography Lesson

Summer often means family vacations. If your vacation involves a road trip, you may be wondering how you are going to survive the hours in the car.  Granted, today's technology offers DVD players, iPods, and assorted other means of entertainment for the children in the back seat, but there's another approach that might engage their minds more effectively.

When my boys were in elementary school, we incorporated geography and travel logs with our road trips, and found that it helped them be more involved in the trip and learn road navigation.  Now I realize that we have access to GPS technology today, so what I'm suggesting falls in the category of "old school"; but doesn't homeschooling in general fall in that same category?  After all, we won't always have the benefit of GPS at our fingertips, and map-reading skills are beneficial in a variety of ways.

So what did this involve?  A folder for each of the children who will participate, maps of the areas in which you will travel, and notebook paper.  At that time, I photocopied the appropriate pages of our road atlas and included that in the boys' folders.  As we started on our trip, we them locate the main towns through which we would travel.  Then we asked them to identify and mark the route that we would be following and the rest areas along the route.  On occasion during the trip, we would ask them to figure out where we were along the route, showing them how to identify the mile markers and exits so that they could find our location.  If someone in the family needed a "pit stop" we asked them to locate the nearest opportunity and direct us. 

When we stopped to see sites of interest along the way, we encouraged the boys to collect brochures from those sites, as well as admission tickets or other memorabilia and stash them in the pockets of their folders.  Each day the boys would write a journal entry concerning the day - noting the highlight(s) of the day, or new things they learned, or what they were looking forward to in the remainder of the trip.

At the end of the trip, while I was catching up on laundry and putting things away, the boys worked on completing their journals. They completed the marking of our routes on their maps, put the brochures on pages with captions, and finished their journal entries.  The result provided an individualized journal/photo album for them to enjoy, along with navigation skills that kept them "in tune" with our progress ... and helped us to hear less of "are we there yet?"

Oh, and we never went on a road trip without a Sonlight book (or two) to read along the way.  By reading one chapter per hour, we broke up the activity in the car to allow individual and group activities ... at least until we got to the point of "oh, Mom, don't stop reading yet" and passed the book around for others to take turns reading chapters aloud. 

Try it, you might find road trips more enjoyable!

Kelly

Parlez vous ... sprechen zie?

You've probably seen the kiosks in your local mall with those bright yellow boxes.  Have you ever stopped and perused the program? 

You don't need to wait for your students to reach high school to introduce foreign language studies.  Rosetta Stone incorporates a dynamic immersion approach to teach students using the audio and visual capabilities of your computer.  A student that can comfortably handle a mouse, can begin work with the simpler lessons, often as young as 6 years old.  Older students can progress into written lessons and pronunciation practice with native speakers guiding the lessons.

So, Mom or Dad, have you ever dreamed of learning to speak another language?

There was a time when I thought I didn't have need to learn another language, but then I married an Army officer and we were stationed in Europe.  Learning at least the basic portions of a new language, or two, was vital then.  Nowadays, you don't need to anticipate traveling out of the country to find learning another language beneficial.  There are opportunities to speak other languages in everyday circumstances.  You may choose to learn the same language that your children are learning, or venture into another language that interests you.  With Rosetta Stone, there are over 30 languages from which you can choose. and all of them are available through Sonlight Curriculum.

Why would you want to purchase your Rosetta Stone program from Sonlight?  Well, there's a significant difference between the program that you would purchase at the mall kiosk and the one that is offered by Sonlight?  Sonlight offers the Homeschool edition, which includes the Student Management System at no additional cost, and allows you to track multiple students' progress through the lessons.

The Student Management System is a key feature, but now there's an even more exciting feature that I want to share.  Rosetta Stone is available at a significant savings through June 11th!  How significant is the savings?  Well, I'd call more than 1/3 off a significant savings, wouldn't you?

Rosetta Stone languages are offered in multiple levels, and you can purchase these levels in bundles of 1 to 5 sets, with the greatest savings available when you purchase all 5 sets of one language.

      Any individual level is $159 (marked down from $249-299 - you save $140!)
      Level 1-2 sets are $259 (marked down from $449 - you save $190!)
      Level 1-3 sets are $359 (marked down from $579 - you save $220)
      Level 1-5 sets are $459 (marked down from $749 - you save a whopping $290)

These prices are the lowest I've seen on Rosetta Stone in years, and Sonlight is offering not only these great prices but also free shipping and no sales tax if you live anywhere but Colorado or Indiana.  That adds a lot more to the savings.

If you've ever thought of exploring a new language, now's the time to look into Rosetta Stone.  Wouldn't this make a great adventure for the whole family to embark on this summer? What's it going to be ... Francais, Deutsch, Espanol, or something more unique?  There's a world of language waiting for you in a little yellow box.

Kelly

Spring Is Coming

For many of us, this time of year can be a bit of a struggle. You may be feeling cabin fever if your yard is still buried under piles of snow, or you are wallowing in rain-soaked fields. Whatever your outside environment may be, many homeschoolers find their vision blurred and their strength waning at this time of year. 

Hang in there!  Spring is coming and the finish line for this school year is almost within reach.  So what do you do to get over the hump?

First of all, take a break from academics.  Declare a game day, if you can't get out of the house, or take a field trip if you can escape.  You can play educational games, but the importance is PLAY.  Pack a picnic and eat it in the family room or cook hotdogs in the fireplace or woodburning stove.  Step outside your "norm" for a day or two to reset your mind.

Take the opportunity to consider your school year.  What has worked?  What is lacking?  In what areas do each of your children still need focused help?  These will be the basis for planning for next year, and it's helpful to take notes while it is fresh in your mind.  If your local homeschool convention is coming soon, look in the right column of this blog to find my Convention Survival Guide.  Go to your convention with a plan and purpose so that you are able to come away with your needs met rather than just being tossed to and fro by a full schedule of speakers and an equally full lineup of vendors in the exhibit hall.

And have you begun to feel the growing anticipation of a new Sonlight Curriculum catalog?  It won't be long before that valuable resource will arrive in your mailbox.  I'll let you in on a secret ... the catalog will be available online before it shows up in print.  If you a really eager to see what's coming for this year, keep an eye on the Sonlight website.

Questions - aren't there always?  You can contact me at klutman@sonlight.com and I will be glad to provide answers.

Multitasking - Fact or Fiction

In our fast-paced, often overloaded society, it seems that one's ability to multitask is a vital skill.  I have generally seen this skill most often demonstrated by mothers, haven't you?  Let's face it, just getting started in the morning has Mom juggling wakeup times, breakfast preparation and supervision, ensuring the children have dressed themselves (unless Mom had to do that, too) appropriately and made their beds, answering that first phone call of the day, and thinking of the tasks that must be accomplished and appointments that must be kept during the day....and that's just the general stuff!

John Medina, in his book Brain Rules, definitively states that the brain cannot multitask.  What?! That was my response when reading the statement, so I naturally had to read on in an attempt to find a weakness in his defense of the statement.  While Medina notes that at one level the brain can multitask - noting that we can walk and talk at the same time, that pianists can play two different arrangements with their left and right hands, that your heart continues to beat while you read a book, etc. - he clarifies his definition of multitasking by stating that "we are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously."  Hmmmm ... now I have to focus on processing this information.

Medina demonstrates his point with the example of a teenager who is determined to write a paper while keeping his cellphone and instant messenger open to receive messages from friends.  Look at the steps that the brain follows in this effort:

1. Shift alert - as the student sits down to write the paper the brain signals an attention shift.
2. Rule activation for task - the brain sends out a search query to find the neurons capable of providing the information needed to write the paper, and then activates those neurons.
3. Disengagement - receives audible alert of an IM (instant message) from a friend.  Since different neurons are required for interacting with that friend, the brain signals a shift of attention.
4. Rule activation for task - the brain sends out a search query to find the neurons capable of writing to that friend and activates them.

These 4 steps must occur in sequence each time the student switches from one activity to another.  Have you ever counted how many IMs and cell messages can be exchanged between just two friends in a given hour - and my teens often carried on conversations with multiple friends at the same time?  No wonder that school assignment or paper did not get accomplished very efficiently!  Note to self after reading this chapter:  establish periods of time during the school day when the IM and cell phone are shut off so that my student can better focus on one task, and then try not to be another source of distraction for him while he is working.

But I can still hear the gears turning in many of your minds - ha!  I've gotten your attention focused!  You are likely thinking that you see many people multitasking with apparent efficiency.  How does that work?  Medina says that those who appear to be good at multitasking actually have good working memories which are capable of paying attention to several inputs at once.  They still need to process each of these inputs and determine what action is warranted for each.  If the inputs involve tasks with which the person is familiar, then switching between related inputs and tasks can be done more efficiently.  Yet, let's face it, we each have our limits, and whatever your capabilities may be ... your brain still needs a break!

Yes, we can be successful in processing multiple inputs and performing accordingly, but we can't function that way in all circumstances.  Help your children understand this important aspect of brain function and their need to establish opportunities to focus on one topic, and you should find your homeschooling efforts will be more efficient and less stressful.

Kelly