Your child has homework every day, which means you have homework every day
too. A 15-20 minute reading session daily will help your child practice the
strategies we teach at school. A good trick, as children bring home books
they can read on their own, is to sit behind your child as s/he reads so
that the work becomes theirs. They hold the book, they move their fingers
under the words, they "mask" parts of words to look for vowels and word
chunks, they use the pictures to help determine text. Math will come home
nearly every day, but ought to be practice of a skill we've worked on. If
homework is particularly difficult, please make a note of it and we will go
over it with your child.
When spelling begins, your child will have a list of words to learn to spell
and use. We work with these words each day of the week, so children should
practically have them memorized by Day 4 in the week. More information about
spelling will come home shortly.
If homework ever brings your child (or you) to tears of frustration, just
stop and let us know. There is a difference between work that is challenging
and work that is just beyond present capabilities and we want to all be
sensitive to the effects of each.
Conversations about a story or book can encourage good thinking about
motivation of characters, the point of the story, the lessons taught and the
personal connections children find.
Children should make a daily habit of working on basic addition and
subtraction math facts until answers can be given in less than 5 seconds.
Homework does not need to be generated by a teacher. There is a new link on
this site that hooks you up with the Department of Education website Parent
section. This was a great find and we recommend it to parents who want
specific subject area ideas for homework. Other parent generated
homework might include reports, experiments, writing letters, following a
recipe, building, constructing, making up a dance or song, learning to play
a musical instrument, reading children's magazines, learning a new skill or
spending time working on an old one. If you want more of the "seat work"
type of homework, sheets can be downloaded from the web (Google Kid's Math,
or Science or whatever it is you're interested in) and workbooks can be
purchased at stores.
Give your child a box and ask what they think could be made from that. It
could be a store, car, spaceship, stage, animal body, whatever! Then get the
materials they need and offer help as needed.
Give your child a piece of posterboard and two dice. Challenge them to make
up a math game!
Give your child a big piece of paper and suggest they create their own world
map of their own made up world!
As you drive, look for vowels on license plates and signs. Practice the
sounds.
When you walk, read home address numbers as 1000s (eg. 4672, children would
say 4 thousand six hundred seventy two). Is it even or odd?
Estimate how many steps it takes to get from one location to another.
Have a guessing jar. Fill with coins, jellybeans, marbles, buttons,etc.
Start small and do often. Children will get very good at estimating amounts.
When in the car, have your child figure out how many miles you drive.
Take out a map and plan a fake (or real!) vacation. Guess temperatures in
cities around the world. Check their guesses on the internet.
These are just a few ideas. You have many of your own. Direct them to the
parent page people and they can post!
