This is a game in one of my son’s books. It helps to teach the concept of “up” and “down”.

It needs 2 players, so here is an opportunity to “play” with your child.

• You’ll need 2 counters. You can cut 2 circles from a used cereal box (or something that is just as thick) and draw a koala bear on each circle.
• You’ll also need a die with numbers 1-6.
• Make a die with 3 red sides and 3 blue sides. Actually, instead of a die, I made another counter that is red on one side and blue on the other.
• Roll the die to see how many spaces to move. Then roll the color die (or flip the blue/red counter) to see if your koala moves up or down. If the counter lands on red move up. If it’s blue, move down.
• The first one to reach the top of the tree wins.

p.s. In the end, I just flipped a coin to see if koala moves up or down. This is probably a more hassle-free way.

Image via Wikipedia

How many fingers do you use when you type?

I learned how to type with all my fingers (like a professional typist) when I just finished secondary school (high school). During that time, I didn’t have a computer. I used a typewriter. Yeah, very old fashioned.

For some reason, I loved to type. I used to help my mom type out the exam papers for her class (she was a teacher). It was one finger typing then, and there was no delete button on the typewriter. It was a very slow process but I loved it anyway.

Well, I can tell you that learning how to type the right way, and the fast way, is one of the best skills I’ve learned. It helped me tremendously when I was in university. Oh boy, the many many papers I had to write. Can’t imagine typing all those pages with just 2 fingers. It is very useful now too as I write articles and blog posts for my work at home business. It really is a time saving skill.

Why am I telling you this?

To encourage you to add “typing” into your list of things your children should learn. Here’s a website that you can use to develop typing skills: TypingWeb

Don’t worry, it’s free. I’m not trying to sell you anything, nor am I affiliated to them. I found them through google coz’ I want my girl to learn how to type. She loved it as she tried the first lesson (which was just typing fff, jjj, jjf, ffj etc…). She can’t wait to get on the computer again to practice some more.

Another good thing about this program is that it is a good way to lure your kids away from noisy, crazy, violent computer games. They can learn a skill and have fun at the same time. Make it competitive if you want; see who can type faster and more accurate… them or you? Kids love it when they can beat their parents at something

This is one skill that is not on any school syllabus. However, learning should not be confined to the school syllabus. Therefore, give your children time to learn skills that can give them an advantage. Typing fast can be advantageous.

Leave me a comment to tell me what other skills you think we should teach our children?

A few days ago, I was using a workbook to teach my son.  The lesson was on animals and he had to learn the animal names in Bahasa Malaysia. It seemed such a waste to throw away the book after he was done. So, I had this idea on how I could recycle his workbook.

I cut out the pictures and pasted them on a blank card. Well, I got my son to do the gluing, so I got him involved too. Then I wrote the names of the animals on another set of cards.

There are a few “games” that we can play using these cards to help him learn his vocabulary.

• Memory game:  Turn them all over. Opening 2 cards at a time, he has to find the matching cards.
• Matching game: I show him the picture, and he has to show me the matching word.
• Snap: He holds the picture cards, I hold the word cards. Together, we open one card at a time. If they match, you have to slap your hand over the cards and yell “SNAP”.

By cutting the pictures out, he gets to do this lesson over and over again until he gets it (or until he is bored of it). You won’t get this kind of repetitive learning with just the workbook.

So, if you have preschool workbooks lying in your house, be creative and find ways to recycle them and make learning more fun for your children.

I like to use phonics when it comes to teaching my children to read and write. There is one book that has helped a lot and that is READING REFLEX: THE FOOLPROOF PHONO-GRAPHIX METHOD FOR TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO READ

It is not exactly phonics. There are some differences. The correct term for it would be Phono-Graphix. For example, they don’t encourage teaching letter names, just the sounds. This is to make it less confusing on the children. They also emphasize that you do not ask “what sound does this letter make?”, instead you ask “what does the sound picture represent?” (Because letters don’t make any sounds. Cows, dogs, cats and other animals do, but not letters.)

Well, that is just one of their ideas about teaching reading to children.

The book is actually a manual. I just follow their methods and their steps. It works.

The picture above is a lesson I did with my son. It helps train his auditory processing skills. The goal is to help him understand how he can manipulate sounds to create and change words. This is how the lesson went:

• First, I wrote the different alphabets onto individual cards.
• Then I called out the word “rug”. He had to select the letters for that word and then spell it out by putting them in the right order.
• I would then call out the next word “bug”. As you can see, all it takes is to replace the first sound from /r/ to /b/.
• After “bug”, the next word is “dug”.
• And so we go through the list of words until the end. Each time, only one sound needs to be manipulated. It could be either the beginning, middle or ending sound.

I took the lesson one step further. I had my son write down the words that he spelled. We are working on his writing skills you see. He wrote them all down without complaining. He enjoyed the activity and was happy he could do it. (Oh, forgot to mention that my son is 4 years old).

Well, I hope this gives you an idea on one activity you can do to teach your child to read and write. If you are looking for a good way to teach your children to read, give Phono-Graphix a try.

p.s. Learn more on Phono-Graphix at their site: Read America!

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