Website: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/GrowthSeason/calendar.html
Appropriate for ages: 5 - 11
Helps with: Summer Learning
Review: This is a calendar of small things to do every day for seven weeks of summer vacation. The calendar is designed to accommodate all elementary age children. Most of the activities are very simple and short. Quite often they are fun things that kids will enjoy doing. The activities are varied and cover reading, teaching, learning, culture, and even college.
Check with your child's teacher(s) to find out what his or her philosophy on homework is. Some teachers want homework to be done completely independently. They do not want parents to help because they plan on grading the work. Other teachers want parents to be partial participants, letting the kids do the work and the parents check it. Still others want parents to be highly involved. This is my personal preference. I want parents to re-teach anything that kids do not understand. I teach during class the way that I've found to work best for the majority of students. However, your child may not be in the majority. You as a parent can work with your child to find the style that works best for him. You can try different methods until he gets it down. Typically teachers will not want you to give the answers to your child, because that will not teach him how to do it. Teaching how to do it (without giving the answers away) is a whole different story. That is very helpful. Once the child understands how to do the work, make sure you give the child an opportunity to try some problems on his own. He needs that practice before he gets all the way to the test. I also wanted parents to check problems and have kids fix problems that were incorrect.
Talk to your teacher(s), and find out how they feel about homework. Then, coordinate your evening homework routine to fit that particular model.
Homework needs to be done as far away from distractions as possible. The living room or the kitchen table can work (especially if you want to be around to help,) but only if you can keep siblings, pets, and general noise at bay. If that is not possible, their bedroom or a study will probably be your best bet. Distractions are not only extrinsic, however. Intrinsic distractions can be just as problematic. You don't have to be a parent too long to figure this out! Try to have the homework place set up so that these distractions are as limited as possible. For example, have a supply of pencils (to replace the one that will inevitably get broken,) plenty of paper, perhaps a drink of water, and anything else your child typically needs. This will help your child focus, and hopefully get through his homework quicker.
Homework will be most successful if you stick to a routine. Try to do homework in the same place and at the same time every day. This helps kids to get into the homework mode. Also, if there is a set routine it helps kids to know what is expected of them. With kid's schedules as busy as they are, it can be tough to stick to a routine, but really work on making it a priority. Try to create a routine that will work for your family, and then stick to it!
Some routine suggestions:
Flashcards are a great way to help kids study. Here's an idea to take it one step farther: use Power Point to create a simple slide show of the flashcards. (Even if you have no experience with Power Point, you could put together a slide show quite easily.) The great thing about using Power Point is that you can time the child's response easily. You can set the slides to change every so many seconds, so that you know if the child answers in time. This would be a great tool for practicing any timed response. For example: math facts, sight words, vocabulary words, etc. Then, the child has until the slide changes to answer.
More and more, tests are becoming multiple choice. It is a great idea to give your kids a few pointers on how to test well. Obviously, it's not a great idea to guess on your tests, but if your child can not come up with the answer, then it is nice to have an idea of how to pick wisely.
One thing to pay attention to on multiple choice is distracters. The wrong answers are called distracters, for obvious reasons. Often, two or three of the answers will be very similar or have quite a bit in common. That way if you are close to the right answer, but not 100% sure, the similar answers make it a bit more difficult. However, if you have no idea of where to head on the answer, this can help you as well. Look for the answers that have some similarity. That should help narrow your choice just a bit. It will most likely be one of those answers. This technique may increase your odds to a 50/50 or one out of three.
Website: http://www.hippocampus.org/
Appropriate for ages: 8 and up
Helps with: Math, Science, Government, History, Psychology, and Statistics
Review: This website is a great tool. You can search through all of the topics listed above and find video lessons on hundreds of subtopics. For example, you can search U.S. History and find videos of most major historical events. Additionally, you can switch to the textbook tab and search through quite a few textbooks. Each textbook includes a list of topics to help you find what you are looking for quickly. This site is very easy to navigate through and holds a wealth of information.
Next time you have been working on a skill or concept with your child, have him try to "teach you" the material. This is a great way to assess if your child has grasped the concept or not. If a child can teach it back to you, then he has truly mastered what he was learning. It is also a great way to find areas that still need a little polish. Children usually like to feel like they are teaching an adult something new, so it should not be too hard to get your child to cooperate. Ask questions to make sure he explores all areas of the material in his lesson. Obviously, this idea will not work too well if the student has not understood the material himself. So, make sure you cover it thoroughly before having him teach it back to you.
As a teacher I have seen so many people pay for tutoring, buy practice books, etc. Usually, you can get all the help your child needs for free. Teachers often get kits with their textbooks of all the things they need to supply each student. These kits have to be used for several years, so the teacher cannot give you the supplies. However, if you are a parent that can be trusted, the teacher will often let you borrow things. You could probably get things like rulers, sets of coins and bills for money practice, protractors, compasses, calculators, small clocks for practicing time, counters, shapes, fraction bars (to help with learning fractions,) etc.
Another thing that teachers get with their textbooks is extra practice books. If your child needs help, have them do some extra practice at home. Teachers cringe on the inside when you ask for extra worksheets, because they honestly don't have the time to make more copies. If you would like the extra help for your child, ask the teacher to write down the lesson numbers she has planned for the next week. Then go into school (schedule a time with her ahead) and make copies from the extra workbooks that the students don't use in class. Usually a teacher will work with you on that and be happy to give you the books if you will look up the pages and make the copies yourself. Most books have the lesson numbers on each page somewhere so you should be able to figure out what to copy from the list of lesson numbers that you asked for.
One final thing that parents often asked me about is tutoring. Honestly, tutors can be counterproductive sometimes. If the tutor doesn't teach a skill the same way that the teacher did, it can be confusing to the child. Also, the tutor doesn't know how the test will look. So, who knows all of this information besides the teacher? The textbook companies do. In most cases they are the ones that write your child's tests, so they would know how to tutor your child. They also are very likely to present the material in the same way that the teacher did, since she is teaching from their books. How are you going to get the textbook company to tutor your child? Actually, most companies provide free e-books online. This is great because your child can do homework on the computer using the e-book and not have to lug home 20 pounds of book weight. Most of the time, these sites will also provide extra practice, re-teach lessons, games, and tutoring for each lesson in the book. You will probably have to ask the teacher to give your child a user name and password to access the site. Once you have that information, you should have access to all kinds of resources (for free) that hit on the exact skills your child is covering in class.
Website: Firefox add-on: Glubble
Appropriate for ages: 14 and under
Helps with: Internet safety and general education
Review: Glubble is a Firefox add-on. In other words, it only works if you use Firefox as your internet browser. If you are not a Firefox user, you may want to consider it. Firefox is a free download, and a wonderful browser with many free add-ons to personalize your internet experience.
Glubble can be used to help your kids ease into the internet. It helps you find educational activities on the internet for your kids to play with. There are even puzzles and audio books. Also, you can make a family page where kids can connect with their extended family (or whoever you give access to the page.) That is a nice feature if your child wants to be involved in social networking, but you aren't quite ready for them to have a facebook account. Once you complete the registration for glubble you will have a page that is accessible from any computer on the internet. That is a great feature because you won't have to worry about packing it on the flash drive.
Education is moving away from memorization and towards critical thinking. Obviously memorization will always be a part of school, but its role is becoming smaller and smaller. The amount of information in our world is growing exponentially. New ideas, technology, and ways of doing things are being created every day. Simply memorizing the facts will not cut it anymore; you could never keep up. Education has realized this, and is turning to teaching "how" and "why" as opposed to lists of facts. Students today need to be able to figure out answers instead of just recalling them.
What can you do to help your child prepare for this phenomenon so he will do well in school and ultimately in life? Make sure you ask your kids to evaluate things. Have them give their opinion, but then have them back it up with why they think their opinion is valid. Get them involved in solving puzzles. This will improve logic which in turn improves critical thinking. Instead of just telling your children things, have them think things through. Far too many parents are thinking for their kids. This does not benefit your child at all. Make sure you are interacting with your kids in such a way that they are stimulating their brains and learning to reason. This will be so helpful to them in school, but really, it is a life skill that kids cannot live without.
Website: http://books.google.com/
Appropriate for ages: All Ages
Helps with: Reading and Research
Review: This is a collection of books and older periodicals. The nice thing about this site is the variety. Also, since it is run by Google, it is very organized and easy to navigate through. Many of the periodicals cover topics of science and history so they will be wonderful for research. The books, however, can be disappointing at times. The problem is not the variety or amount of books. The problem is that they often omit the end of the book. This is mostly due to copyrights. By leaving the end off, they can possibly get you to buy the book from them. I would just suggest that you scroll through books and see if the end is missing before you get too involved. Otherwise, this is a great book resource, and closer than the library.
Helping your child memorize lists for a test? A great way to help your child remember is by making a sentence with the first letters of the items in the list. For example, we teach kids to remember the order of operations (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction) with the sentence: Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. Similarly, you can use "my very excited mother just served us nine pizzas" to remember the order of the planets (if you count Pluto as a planet.) Usually, things that are memorized this way will stick in your brain much longer. Hopefully, it should at least get your child through his test.
