Value Bookshop's Reading Notes

Children learn quickly when learning is enjoyable. Using games is a way to make learning fun. Here is an idea on how to make it fun for your children to learn to read high frequency words: Use the memory game.  Some people call it the concentration game or matching game.

How to do it?
Select the words that you want your children to learn by sight. Write them on individual index cards. Make sure each word is written on 2 different cards. So if you have a list of 10 words, you should have 20 cards. Shuffle them around and lay them out face down on a table or floor. Have your child open one card and read the word.  Then open another card and read that word. If the word is the same, your child keeps the matching pair of words. If not, the two cards must be flipped back facing down again.

It’s more fun to play when there are 2 players or more. So if your child has no other children to play with, why don’t you join in the game. Each person takes a turn. The one who finds a match gets to go again.

Tips

• If your children are very young or don’t have a very long attention span, don’t use too many words. Maybe start with 8-10 cards and then slowly increase when they get better.
• If you sign up for my free e-course “Teaching Your Children To Read and Spell”, you will receive a teaching toolkit which includes a list of  Dolch words (high frequency words).  You don’t have to go to the internet to do anymore searching. I’ve got it ready for you to print out.

Just fill in the form below to receive the free e-course that will run for 8 days.

You don’t need to be a genius to teach your kids to read and spell. You also don’t need to spend tons of money to get certified to teach. The first step in teaching your kids to read and spell is to decide that you  are going to put in that effort. The next step is to learn what your kids need to know and have to become good readers and spellers.

If you read aloud to your children everyday (even babies), you are already preparing them to learn how to read. Nursery rhymes also plays a part in your child’s literacy. Building a home library and surrounding them with reading materials helps to build their desire to read, especially if the books, magazines or comics are about things that interest them.

They are many things you can do informally and formally to teach your children to read and spell.

If you desire to teach your children to read and spell, but don’t know where to start, click this link and sign up for my e-course:
How To Teach Your Children To Read and Spell

I’ve even put together some charts and a checklist to make your work easier. Click the link to find out more.

I came across a cool website that allows you to create very artistic word clouds like the one I did above. You can either type in your own words or type in the website that you want them to pull the words from.

So, why do I think this is cool? I figured that it can be used as an interesting education tool.

1. You can use it to introduce new words to your children (build up their vocabulary). For example, if you are teaching your children about Asia, you could create a word cloud on the countries in Asia plus whatever words related to Asia e.g. warm climate, oriental, noodles, spices, beautiful beaches, rice
2. After teaching your children about a certain topic, you can check their understanding by asking them to create a word cloud of words related to the topic. For example, after teaching my son about global warming, I asked him to list all the words that come to his mind related to that theme.

There is a button called “randomize” and every time you click it, it will give you a different word cloud (different style, design, colors, font). You can then print it out for your child.

Try it out. It’s pretty cool. Plus, it will indirectly help your children’s creativity.

School holidays and bored kids at home… that combination is a nightmare to some parents. Well, here is a suggestion… get them to learn how to draw manga.

I was around the net the other day and came across someone’s manga avatar. I thought it would be cool to have one too. Searching around for a site where I could make one, I landed at the Avatar Face Maker. As I was contemplating which cute hairdo I wanted, it occurred to me that this was a great resource to help improve my children’s drawing skills. It was a good way to show them how a face can be drawn in many different ways. I’m not very good at drawing, so this actually helped me too

I went to YouTube to see what they had on manga drawings and found this guy called Mark Crilley to be really educational. He has many videos on how to draw manga. Even though me and my kids’ manga faces still look kinda mangled, it was really inspiring to see how he easily drew those manga characters.

If your kids really like doing this, why not invest in this book: Kids Draw Big Book of Everything Manga

Anyway, just thought I’d share with you this fun activity.

p.s. This activity is more suited towards older children, probably around 6 years and up.

One of the kid’s magazine that I subscribed for my children featured a story about the Titanic. They seem to be very intrigued about it. I guess it sounded like a fairy tale coz’ my son asked “Mom, is this real?” After our little reading session on the Titanic, I found this great video explaining how the Titanic sank. If you want to add a little Titanic into your children’s homeschooling, you’ll like this video.

Whether your kids are being homeschooled or not, you should sit down to educate your children. My children go to school but I know what they are learning there do not fuel their love for learning. The problem is I sometimes wonder “What should I teach them?” Are you like me? There are so many things that we can teach our children, it is difficult to know where to start or what to choose.
Well, as you know, the internet is a great resource. I found a site that has lesson plan ideas from grades K-12. The site is by Scholastic. Go to their homepage and you’ll find a button for teaching resources. Great stuff there. I also like the “top news” section they have. For example, currently there is the Icelandic volcanic ash issue. Did you tell your children about it? you can actually branch off to learning about volcanoes.

I’m going to browse through that site some more. Hopefully my children will be as excited to learn about these stuff as I am. Here is the website’s link: Scholastic’s Teaching Resource

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