Value Bookshop’s Reading Notes

Many children now enter preschool at a very early age, some even as young as 2 years old. Through my observations, the three main reasons for this early schooling exposure are:

1. No stimulation at home because the mother is working and the child is either left with a maid, grandparents or babysitter.
2. Parents feel that the child needs to learn social skills.
3. The fear that a child may not be able to cope when they start formal school at 7 years old and therefore, needs to be given a headstart and undergo full preparation.

There is nothing wrong with the first two reasons, but the last may be a cause for concern. If you are a parent, please do not push the kindergarten to give your child more homework. I remember talking to my daughter’s kindergarten principal 3 years ago and she mentioned that due to the many parent’s request, they had to pile on the homework and drill the child to be prepared for Std.1. That made me sad. I imagined preschool to be a fun experience for a child. Instead, we start stressing them out early in life getting them to finish their dull, boring homework. Remember when you were trying to coax your child to go to preschool or kindergarten for the first time? What did you tell them? How did you tell them kindergarten was like? Is it really like you said?

Now and then I hear stories from parents that worry their child is working on academic material way beyond their age. Some children may be able to cope, but there will be many who struggle. Well, such kindergartens will continue to exist but you don’t have to follow in their suit. As a parent, you are still your child’s no.1 educator. Here are some things you can do to motivate your children and put back some love into their learning.

1. Give them time to play. Yes, you heard me. Let them PLAY! Play is not a bad thing. Young children need play for their development. Don’t drown them in extra classes. Encourage physical activities, especially outdoor activities. Let them run, jump, climb, hop, catch, throw, and skip. Give them room to explore, create and imagine.

2. If you think your child needs some motivation to learn, DO NOT go out and get them more worksheets. Instead, try to tune in to their interest and adapt the lessons accordingly. Make the learning informal and personal. Give them a breather and get away from the school syllabus. For example, create funny and zanny stories together and have your child illustrate it. Maybe your child is a dinosaur fan. Learn to count using his dinosaur toys. Make up your own song to learn the days of the week. Learn about fruits by making a fruit salad and then gobbling it up afterward.

3. A child does not need to sit down for 1 hour or more before learning occurs. Learning could happen in 5 minutes. So if you did an activity that lasted just 5 minutes, don’t feel that it is not enough. It is okay to do short lessons throughout the day. Sometimes it is more effective than doing one loooooonnnng lesson.

4. Learning is not confined to reading, writing and arithmetic. EQ is important too. Help them deal with their feelings and emotions. Teach them lessons to build character and arm them with knowledge to choose the right.

5. Read together for fun. Don’t always think that the goal of reading together is to teach them how to read. Instill first the love for reading. Get them to associate reading with good feelings. If you have a preschooler that can’t sit through a read-aloud session for very long, don’t worry. Books are not the only things that have words. Read to them signboards, notices, words on the cereal box, letters that come in the mail (yeah, even junk mail), magazines, words on their shirt etc… words are all around us. Just point it out to them.

6. Build a home library. Get your children a shelf (or shelves) of their own. Fill it with books that are beautifully illustrated and that are well written. Key in on their interest and get books that address that interest e.g. princesses, dinosaurs, trains, cars etc….

7. Have interesting discussions during or after your reading sessions. Bring up thought provoking questions such as “what would you do if you were in that situation?” or “why did she do that?”. You could also think of follow-up activities to do. For example, after I read a book about Henry the whale, we searched on the internet for whale sounds. We also looked up pictures of different kinds of whales. The idea is to get them excited about learning by being excited yourself.

8. Anything can count as “learning”. Learning doesn’t have to just come from books. Talk about the things you do, the things you see, the things you use, the way you do things etc…. Basically, talk about life and things that go on in life. For example, have them observe how you prepare food — wash the rice, cut the vegetables, why do you need to refrigerate food. If you bake, ask them how to know when the cake is done? (stick in a skewer and if it comes out clean, it’s done). Pull out weeds in the garden and show them what the roots look like, tell them what the leaves are for and how they always grow towards the sunlight. When you are driving home, ask them where to turn. Show them how to fold the clothes and let them try. Point out the different kinds of clouds in the sky. All these little lessons surround us and can be counted as “learning.” These kind of learning do not show up on a test paper or school evaluation.

So, don’t limit your child’s learning to what goes on in school. Their love for learning begins at home. Your attitude and vision influences their education. So share with me how you have put back some love into your children’s learning?

* Click to enlarge image

Is your child a fan of Dora the Explorer? Well, transfer some of that excitement to this book. Here we are looking for Boots (the monkey). He wears red boots. So, on every page, you have to look for something red. When you find it, open the flap to see if it is Boots. Look out for swiper, he is always luring somewhere. You know what to say, “Swiper no swiping, Swiper no swiping!” (My children’s favorite chant.)
You can use this book to support your children’s learning of colors. Out of all the colors on the page, see if your child can identify the correct one. Each page also shows a different place e.g. garden, forest, playground etc…. Ask your child if she were to hide, where would she hide. Maybe you could even follow-up with a game of hide-and-seek!

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When trying to motivate your young children to learn, it works best when you, as a parent, join in the learning. For example, whenever I give my 7 year old daughter an assignment to write a short story, she would hem and haw and do whatever in her power NOT to do it. However, when I say “come sit with me and we will take turns writing out a story”, she will willingly comply. So, here is a story we wrote the other day. I wrote the first line, she wrote the next and we continued taking turns until the story ended. Her contribution are the ones in italic, recorded here as it is without corrections on my part.

Kiki is a black dog.
She is dog that is kind.
One day she met Scarface Claw the meanest cat in town.
She was frighten of the meanest cat in town.
She was so frighten, she hid under a bush.
Then he look for her.
Oh no! He found her.
She run and cried woof!
Then she thought that instead of running away, she should do something nice for Scarface Claw.
Then she think and think.
The next morning, she went to see Scarface Claw.
She did give him flower and kiss him.
Scarface Claw was so shocked.
Then they became friends. The End.

Sometimes we think that children are full of imagination and therefore should have no problem concocting up stories. But the fact is children need to be taught and guided through the writing process. Their ability to create fantastic stories during play does not translate to efficiency in writing stories. When you throw them a writing assignment without first explaining to how to build the story, they get overwhelmed. It’s like asking them to climb a mountain without proper tools and equipment.

When you write together, you can guide their writing and teach concepts indirectly. For example, start off the story by introducing a character, describe the character, mention where the story is taking place and when, what is the problem, what is the solution and how does it end. To clarify further, break the story into 3 parts: introduction (beginning), body (middle), and conclusion (end). Writing together also gives you the opportunity to teach them how to use punctuations properly. They are able to learn writing by watching how you write.

By writing stories together, the task seems less threatening. Furthermore, you could inject humour or familiar phrases into the story, making the writing process enjoyable. For example, in the story above, I used the character Scarface Claw from the famous story “Hairy Maclary”. In another story that we wrote, I used the phrase “it’s wherever you left it” from the book “Let’s Go, Froggy!” that we’ve read many times.

From these initial writings together, hopefully it will help build their love for writing. It’s okay to take their hand and lead them in the beginning. Don’t make the mistake of throwing them into the deep end before they are able to swim (so to speak).

I’m not sure if you’ve played with this before. I know I did when I was younger. I don’t even know what is it’s proper name. Let’s just call it an open-close paper thingy. Hahahah.

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY:
Find a partner and have them choose a question to answer. If the question is “what’s your name?”, spell their name out loud. Open and close the crafted paper once for each letter you say. Have them choose another question. Open and close the crafted paper accordingly again. Next, have them choose one of the colored circles. Open up the flap and read what’s written under it.

To make one, just print the ready made layout here. I have already done it for you.

The yellow squares at the corner is where you write the questions. What you write here is very flexible and depends on what lesson/skill you want to enforce. For example, I wanted to help my son learn how to spell his numbers, so I wrote different numbers in the boxes. I would choose a number and he would have to spell it out for me, opening and closing for each letter he said out loud. For children that cannot spell yet, they can count the number of times to open and close instead of spelling it out.

With my daughter, I wrote down different questions such as “who do you love?”, “what is your favorite color?” etc…. You could even write down names of nursery rhymes and choose which one you want them to sing. So you see, this paper craft can be adapted to what you want to teach.

Have your child color in the circles with different colors. If you want them to learn how to read, you can assign colors to the circles by writing down the color names and have them color accordingly.

The blue triangles end up being the instructions under the flaps. So, you can write an action you want them to do (jump like a frog, quack like a duck), write a compliment (you have lovely eyes, your smile lights up the world), throw in some admonishments (finish your food, sleep early tonight) or offer some treats (ice cream, chocolate).

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO FOLD:
This is one I made.

Turn the paper over so you have the blank side facing up. Fold diagonally (the left bottom corner to the right top corner). Open the paper up.

Now, fold diagonally again but the opposite direction (the bottom right corner towards the top left corner). Open the paper up and you should see lines that cross to make an “X”.

 Fold each corner to the center.

 It should look like this.

Turn it over.

Fold the corners to the middle. You should see the colored circles now.

Fold it horizontally in half (up-down), then open. Fold it vertically in half (left-right) now and open again.

Slip in your finger (index or middle finger) and your thumb under the flaps in the corners, and push upwards and to the middle. You should end up with this:

This paper craft also helps children’s finger coordination. My kids struggled a bit at first figuring out how to maneuver the paper craft open and close. Be patient and gently show them how to do it. Once they become experts, they will wear out the paper in no time. So, be ready to make a few. Oh, it also makes a great toy for car rides.

Use this funny video to introduce a lesson about animals. You can talk about where animals live, the sounds they make, what they eat and things they do. My children loved this video. I love the animation. See if your child can figure out what animal the singer is actually singing about.

I made a 5 page worksheet for my son to help him learn to spell numbers (1-12). Thought some of you out there might like to use it too. Basically it has scrambled words, fill in the missing letters, underline the correct answer, find the word and matching. The goal of this worksheet was for him to write the words many, many times over, but in a fun way.

It is in PDF format.
You can download it here (right click and select “save as” or “save target as”): Spelling Numbers Worksheet.
But you can permanently find it under this blog’s “freebies” page.
You have my permission to share it with others.