Value Bookshop’s Reading Notes

Do you have a child going to preschool soon? Well, don’t wait till school begins before you start teaching them something. Keep your little ones busy with interesting, fun, coloring preschool worksheets. Teaching them the alphabets, numbers, shapes and simple math.

Don’t have to hunt all over the internet for pages like the one above. There are 5 Jumboworkbooks with 50 pages each. They also come with bright, cheerful certificates and die cut stickers like these:

You can always purchase each Jumboworkbook separately. They each cost USD7.95. Buy the whole set, and you only pay USD24.95, which works out to be almost 10cents per page. I think this is a pretty good deal considering you can print as many copies as you want. Definitely a time saver as you don’t have to go hunting for nice preschool worksheets all over the internet. Of course it is nice to get free worksheets but usually you’ll find limited copies to use per website. Your child can’t be using the same free worksheet over and over again. Here you get 1 book with 50 different variations on the same topic. I highly recommend it.

Click below to see more examples of the book.
JUMBOWORKBOOKS

The Internet has revolutionized many factors of modern life, including education. Looking at the ready information in a wide range of specialties makes Homeschooling online an obvious choice.

Special Benefits of Home Schooling Online

Home schooling has long faced criticism on many fronts, some people point to the parent’s lack of certain skills that a certified teacher might have. Others don’t feel that it gives the children enough chance at socialization. Both of these can be readily answered with home schooling online.

From the earliest days of the Internet, it has been a place for people with special skills and interests to meet. Through home schooling online, parents have easy access to skills and subjects that they may not have ever gained themselves. Suddenly, parents that may not have ever had experience in a given subject can teach it as an expert, or even have it taught by an expert. The advantage to the children’s education is obvious. This is one of the chief benefits of home schooling online, the way it closes the skill gap between parent and the professional teacher.

Yet it may be the children that benefit even more from the increased socialization that home schooling online can provide. Not only can they receive the personalized instruction that home schooling gives them, but through online chatting and instant messaging, they can interact with other students. One of the chief benefits of the public schooling environments has always been the daily practice of social skills. On a daily basis, students have to work with in a cultural framework to get along with the other students, often across cultural and racial lines.

Home schooling has typically lacked this practice, but by home schooling online, parents are providing the children with the opportunity to socialize around the world without sacrificing the control over the environment in which they do it. As they reach out to each other, they can help each other through the programs while forming the same friendships that public school has always developed.

The future of home schooling will definitely be brighter as technologies develop to enhance the experience of home schooling, moving it farther into the digital age. As this future develops, more and more parents will discover home schooling online, and how it can help their children get a leg up in the digital world to come.

KokoD is still not very strong in his Bahasa Malaysia numbers. It’s partly my fault for not revising and reinforcing the teaching. He will sometimes skip a number e.g. “satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima, tujuh.” He hasn’t learned the spellings yet. And even though he can count till twelve, he doesn’t know the names of the numbers in isolation. For example if I ask him what is “enam”, he doesn’t know it is “6″.

So I decided to do some reinforcing today by playing 2 card games. First, I recycled a cereal box and cut out tiny squares to make the cards. On it I wrote numbers and the names of the numbers (in B.M.).

Game 1: Memory Game
Shuffle and then lay out the cards face down. Open two at a time. If they number matches the word, he gets to keep the cards. If not, turn them over and then try again.
Before I started the game, I had him write on a piece of paper:

1 - satu
2 - dua
3 - tiga… (until 10 - sepuluh).

After a few games, I could see that KokoD was getting better at remembering the names of the numbers. I could tell because he didn’t have to refer to his paper much after awhile.

Game 2: Snap!
You could say it is similar to the traditional card game Snap! I divided the cards into two piles - numbers & words.
I took one pile, he took the other pile. We would simultaneously open one card from our pile. If they matched, you have to put your hand on the cards and say “Snap!” The person who is fastest gets to keep the cards.
Of course KokoD would not stand a chance against me when playing this game. I understand that he is just learning and would not have that speed yet. So, I gave him win a few times. Have to give some encouragement right?

Well, as usual, these games are very versatile. You can use these games to teach other concepts e.g colors and shape. You can also use it to build vocabulary in any language. Just use a little imagination and I’m sure your kid will have lots of fun playing err… I mean learning

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.

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.

In my efforts to teach KokoD Bahasa Malaysia, I try to get him to master certain phrases at a time. I usually choose phrases that he can immediately use in a daily conversation. The recent activity we had, the focus was on food. The goal was for him to master the phrase “Saya suka makan…” (I like to eat…) and “Saya tak suka makan…” (I don’t like to eat….)

Here is the outline of the activity we did:
Step 1 - I took one of those pamphlets they give out at the supermarkets and cut out pictures of food such as chicken, fish, prawns, vegetable, banana, apple, bread, cake, etc….
Step 2 - Then I wrote on a piece of paper the names of all those food and left spaces for him to glue the pictures to match the names.

Step 3 - After gluing all the pictures, I had him go through the list and put a tick/check for foods he likes to eat and a an ‘X’ for foods he doesn’t like to eat.

Step 4 - Now the oral practice begins. Going through the list once again, he had to say the full sentence of “Saya suka makan…” (for foods that he put a tick/check) and “Saya tak suka makan…” (for foods he put an ‘X’). For example, he don’t like vegetables so he would say “Saya tak suka makan sayur.”
Step 5 - Stick the list up on the wall so he can practice everyday.

This activity was stress free. My son enjoyed it and more importantly, he learned something.