Value Bookshop’s Reading Notes

My Rating: 5 Stars *****
1. Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten! (Let’s Get Ready Series) (Let’s Get Ready Series)
2. Let’s Get Ready for First Grade! (Let’s Get Ready Series) (Let’s Get Ready Series)

About The Book:
The pages are high gloss, non-stick and dry erase. That means you can use it again and again. The illustrations are colorful and lively. Each book features a teacher and a classroom of multicultural children known as the Cedar Valley Kids. You can meet them at http://www.cedarvalleypublishing.com. You can also view pages of the books at their webpage. They also have an impressive list of awards attesting to the brilliance of these books. The books cover reading, spelling, math and science.

Here is a quick look at what the books cover.
Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten:

• Learning the alphabets
• Initial sounds
• Colors
• Shapes
• Left & Right, Names of the fingers
• Counting to 100
• Skip Counting
• Money
• Opposites
• The Seasons
• Rhyme
• Positional Words
• Body Parts
• Five Senses
• High Frequency Words
• Telling time
• Learning the Months and Days
• Learning to write their name, address and telephone number

Let’s Get Ready For First Grade:

• Vowels and Consonants
• Long and Short Vowel Sounds
• Word Families
• Prefixes and Suffixes
• Contractions and Compound Words
• Capitalization and Punctuation
• Plural
• How to Measure
• Geometric Shapes
• Even and Odd Numbers
• Skip counting and Ordinals
• Addition and Subtraction
• Fractions
• Graph
• Food Groups
• Internal Organs
• Counting Money
• Day and Night
• Solar System
• High Frequency Words
• Reading Comprehension
• Telling Time and Making a Calendar
• Primary and Secondary Colors
• The US Government

My Review:
What can I say? I’m totally impressed by these two books. As a mother who does home-preschooling, I sometimes ask myself the question “what else do I need to teach?” Then there is also the fear that I’ve forgotten or missed out a skill. Now with these two books, I can check myself. The books cover all the basics needed for each level. You could say that it provides a ’syllabus’ for me to follow.

Each lesson is only a page long. There are questions and tips at the bottom of the page to help parents make the lessons interactive and interesting. So learning is made simple and fun.

This book makes learning flexible. If you don’t have much time or have a little waiting time, you can whip out this book and have a quick, short lessons. If you want to have a proper lesson, this book serves as a good opening exercise. Sort of like an appetizer before the main meal. Use your own imagination on how you can expand on the lesson.

The last page of the books highlight tips for parents and caregivers. The author shares some really good advise.

I highly recommend this book. Not only for it’s educational value, but also because it encourages parents to play a more active role in teaching their children. Whether children are homeschooled or attending regular school, parents are still their no.1 teacher. These books will help you inject some fun into learning. Happy Teaching!

Learning these days have become so rigid. Many parents believe that learning means reading books, doing endless worksheets and slogging away at homework. But what happens when the child becomes unmotivated? How do we help them continue learning? Well, ABC news has a story that might just help us be more flexible in our teaching methods.

It’s a story of how David Gilmour, a former Toronto film critic, allowed his son, Jesse, to drop out of high school and turned to homeschooling. Afterall, his son was doing horrible at school with bad grades and bad attitude. He decided that Jesse needed a different kind of learning. What did he do? He used famous films to teach Jesse important life lessons. This is what David said:

“I thought, ‘we have got to do something. Movies are the only education that he’s going to get that I can actually get down his throat without a jack hammer.’”

So they watched at least 3 movies a week, every week. Jesse’s “syllabus” included movies such as “The Godfather,” and “Ishtar.” Father and son studied famous actors, the movie scenes and searched out life lessons.

And did it work? Absolutely. 2 years later, Jesse obtained a high school equivalency. And guess what? He is now applying to film school. No surprises there I guess.

Well, I’m not advocating that you plop your children down in front of the tv the whole day. The point I’m trying to make is this — there are many forms of learning. If your child has become unmotivated in learning, then it’s time for you to see what kind of changes are to be made. Learning doesn’t always have to be about worksheets and extra tuition.

Oh, another point that shouldn’t be missed. Here’s another quote from David:

“In a way, sometimes the movies themselves weren’t that important, it was the time that we spent together.”

To a child, spending time with parents is another form of learning. So don’t forget, you are their most valuable teacher.

Do you know what is the secret to raising an A+ student? The answer is revealed in Reader’s Digest Asia. Here is a statement from their feature article:

Dozens of studies have shown that the most consistent indicators of student achievement - more than income or social status - are the home environment and parental involvement.

They highlighted 3 families where the children have excelled - a Malaysian homeschooling family, and single Filipino mother of three and a Singaporean mother.

Reading the comments and experience of these 3 families, I found a common trait — they all read to their children and encourage their children to love reading. Here are excerpts about the 3 families.

• The Malaysian family - “Most critical of all, there are books - a home library with all kinds of books for adults and children. Their parents began reading to the children when they were just a few months old, instilling a love of books. “
• The single Filipino mother - “…she had to get her kids reading early on. So she took them to the local public library. “They borrowed books after their nursery classes and read at home.” At night, she read aloud to them despite being tired after a full day of work.”
• The Singaporean mother - “She reads to her children ‘all the time.’”

So as you can see, the “nursery” for raising an A+ student is not at school or tuition centers but at home. Parents need to be involved in their children’s learning and one of the most important thing you can do for your children is to teach them to love reading. It starts with 2 very simple acts:

• Read to them often
• Create a home library so they are always surrounded by books

This is one good parenting skill we should all strive for.

Parents are always looking for signs that indicate their growing child is healthy and normal. However, children progress at different rates and have different characteristics. Therefore, when parents feel something is amiss, they wonder if their observation is a cause for concern or maybe they are just being overly anxious. But one thing is for sure, there seems to be more and more children these days diagnosed with autism. Early intervention is important. Having said that, here are some early symptoms of autism that you should know.

• Autistic children are different from normal children in the way they perceive things. Their senses are often heightened and they are very sensitive to stimuli. The trigger is different for each child, but many are sensitive to shrill or loud noises. They hear background noise very loudly and it can quickly overwhelm their delicate nervous systems. This is why they will often cover their ears to help muffle the sounds. Normal sounds are like nails on a chalkboard to an autistic child.
• When you call out their name, they give no response.
• They do not make eye contact.
• They often make repetitive motions to soothe themselves.
• They have a hard time understanding what other people are thinking or feeling.
• Some autistic children resort to head banging or other forms of self-abuse.
• Autistic children will often fixate on one object and ignore everyone and everything else around them.
• They also often have an extreme sensitivity to things like light, sound, or touch. Every child is different and has different things that bother them. Find out what is it that triggers an episode.
• Rocking & flapping their hands in from of their face is another classic symptom.

Although children may show subtle symptoms of autism as a baby, autism is usually diagnosed when they are about 3 years old.

So far I’ve only shared in general the early symptoms of autism. If you are worried about autism and want to discover how to recognize the signs of autism as well as learn breakthrough strategies that can quickly & easily unleash the maximum potential of someone who has autism, read this indispensable guide:

ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO AUTISM

The other night there happen to be on TV the show “Around the World in 80 days.” My daughter sat and watched it with us. Few days later at the library, I found the book “Around the World in 80 days” and thought it would be a nice follow up to the show. There were several versions, so I chose one that was suitable for her level. She must have liked it coz’ she finished the book that day itself.

Anyway, seeing her level of enthusiasm, I thought I could turn this into a homeschool lesson plan. This would be a fun way to learn about the different countries. You know, start our own “Around the World” project. At first I contemplated doing lapbooks but I’ve never tried it. Wanna see what a lapbook is? It’s a really nice way to learn. See the video below:

But lazy me just decided to buy a lined book and we did this instead:

We started with London. Recorded things like which continent it’s on, which country, names of other cities, names of neighbouring countries, the different ways to travel to London, and name of the airports.
Then we started on a picture hunt: pictures of London during the different seasons, and pictures of famous landmarks and stuff. We have the famous red double-decker bus, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Kew Gardens, the River Thames, the big parks, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Royal Albert Hall, and Picadilly Circus.

Once again, online videos were a good tool. Talking about the palace, we watched the changing of the guards. I also mentioned Princess Diana and we watched the royal wedding and her beautiful dress.

I found a fun activity called “A Weekend in London.” Basically it’s outlining a travel itinerary starting with your arrival at Gatwick airport on a Friday evening. You have to find out things like:

• how much is the train ticket to London?
• What is the address of the hotel?
• What is a traditional take-away English meal?
• Where do you want to go to sightsee?

You’ll find this activity here: A Virtual Trip to London

Currently we’ve finished London and Paris. Hopefully one day we’ll actually get to travel and see these places. Okay, hope you liked this lesson idea.