Basic reading and arithmetic

Its amazing what teachers can do in the time that they have our children each time. Try as I might, I cannot get Anoushka to spell "pin" as part of her homework without having to fight with everything that can distract her. But she comes back from school with 5/5 in dictation with words like "mother", "with", "father" and more. Frustrating is an under-statement. 

Things were pretty easy this year with homework not being too taxing. But now, post the Diwali holidays, things have picked up a notch. What I have come to realize since last year and this, is that teachers put an equal responsibility on the learning process on us parents as well. If they teach them spelling, then its up to us to help take it forward. So if the kids learn 10 3-letter words in school, you need to teach them 10 new ones at home. Its how vocabulary building works I guess. The poems she has in school right now are more to string together minor words to make sentences. And homework is a continuation. 

So far I was dealing with English alone, but we now have Kannada and Hindi alphabets too and not to forget numbers up to 200. The question for me was how to make studying a little more interesting beyond homework. 

There are a couple of things that have worked for me. For English, colorful workbooks have worked wonders. All of the exercises are activities and she finds them more interesting than me duplicating homework and classwork in a separate book for her to work on. So workbooks have been my saviors. A little work on them each day has made a difference and helped her think beyond school work

When we read storybooks these days, I hold my finger over each word to give her an idea of where we are. And at regular intervals ask her to read the three or four letter words in tandem with me. It works out to being a game and helps her brush up on the words she knows.

All kids are gadget-adjusted by now and I have downloaded a couple of apps on our tablet which are number and word games for her to play. And of course, there is nothing like repetition so as and when we can, in any situation, we suddenly ask her for a spelling and she does it.

Hindi and Kannada am not having much of any issue now, since its only alphabets and she findings them pretty interesting to work on.

As far as math goes, I mentioned in a earlier post that the housie game helped me teach her sequences. Well have taken it up a notch and now have housie game sessions when her friends come over sometimes. It helps them read the numbers faster on their ticket. Getting them to call out the numbers has helped with recognition of the numbers quicker.

Anoushka came up with a game of her own when we are in the car - she loves to read out the license plates of the vehicles around us. Never thought that would help with recognition, but it did. Same way she spotted the countdown meter at signals and started counting down with it. Now I wouldn't have thought of it at all.

All this has helped with the basics... but Anoushka is a very independent child and has always put up her boundaries. I have found with time and a couple (am underplaying it here) of tantrums later that early morning at breakfast time is the best for revision. When she no longer wants to spell, she will tell me straight off and I respect that.

When she is back from school, its TV and play time and followed by homework. Every Friday evening, no matter what, I don't let her touch her books and she has come to know that. I would rather spread it out over the weekend, for better retention, than make her finish it all up to be free on the weekend. She looks forward to it now.

My current problem is how to prevent learning by rote, which seems to be happening with some spellings and sequences in reading of poems. It takes a careful eye to notice when she is reading by rote and when she actually knows what she is reading. When I figure that out, there will be another post on it. 

The problem with holidays

When it comes to the little ones and what they have learnt - out of sight is out of mind is an under-statement. The first month of summer vacations post LKG, I just left Anoushka to her own devices. I mean, come on, how boring a mother can I be. But the second month onwards, I decided to weave in a game of "teacher-teacher" just to see where we stood. Didn't really like what I saw. Concentration apart - all that I worked to correct - the sequencing of alphabets, mirror images etc were all back with a vengeance. And funny part is that every time I pointed out a mistake she knew instantly that she had to correct it. Alphabets were a piece of cake because that is so well ingrained. My trouble began with numbers.

One morning for her before-after sequences Anoushka decided to read the numbers I had given her Arabic style - from right to left and not left to write. So 45 was read as 54 and the number after was filled in as 55. I freaked out. But of course did that "look of sheer terror" thing all in the mind.

I explained to her that we needed to read numbers from left to right but somehow the reason why we had to seemed to elude her. "That's just the way it is" is not a reason that cuts it with this generation. So in came an impromptu game. Each time I asked her to read the numbers, she had to raise her according to the number she was reading. So left hand up - 4, right hand up 5. 4 and 5 make 45 and so the number after is 46.

She did that on day one and then I decided to tone it down. She loves this concept of secrets and so I told her this way of reading numbers was a secret of ours. So if she wanted to do it in class, she could just use the two fingers on her hand, the left finger and right finger and read the numbers.

I tested her in different ways over the days to come - wrote the numbers and asked her to read out loud, gave her the numbers and got her to sit somewhere else and come up with a completed board. Gave her a choice of book or board to write on. Slowly but surely the message came across. 

Before and after numbers

Pix for representational purposes only

Its amazing how naturally all these things come to us. But try explaining to a 5 year old what the logic is when you say 39 comes before 40. When you are faced with questions on how four and zero goes back and becomes three and nine, you will know what I mean. She already had 20 to 0 down pat as far as backward numbers was concerned, but when it came to understand what comes before 30, 20, 70 or any of these kinds of numbers it did not help to say -"4 and 0, when you see any number like this and you have to say the backward numbers, in place of 4 put 3 and in place of zero put 9" and then expect the little one to remember this for all these kinds of numbers.

Honestly I did try this at first but it did not work. And then one day long after she passed out of LKG and was on her summer holidays, the grandparents decided to get her a snakes and ladder game to play in the evenings. I realized that this was an ideal way to start small time revisions while playing. So each time we rolled the dice, I told her that she had to tell me the before and the after numbers and only then could she move forward. And she did. Of course she did get some of them wrong initially, but when you couple it with the fun of rolling a die and moving on numbers, she began to remember which number related to her winning and managed to pick up the sequence.Playing this once a day really helped and the little one has no idea that I am actually conning her n remembering her numbers. 

Number sequences

Pix for representational purposes only

My daughter talks a lot and her volley of questions can be really difficult to handle. So naturally when it came to numbers, logic always seem to slip away by her as to how 11 came after 12 and 31 came after 30. Its only when I sat down with her to try and explain things about sequences, that I realized 5-year-olds just can't grasp why 11 comes after 12 and why 31 comes after 30. Think about it.. can you come up with one sane explanation?

So the only thing that I could think of was bringing out the Housie game that we had inside and give her the bag of 90 coins. I just told her to pick a coin and place it on the board. It took a long while, but once she was done, I asked her to find all the ones (1, 11, 21, 31..) and then told her to find all the 10s (10, 20, 30...) AND THEN... whew! showed her how 11 comes after 12 and 31 comes 30..

The board helped her see an order in the way numbers are placed and soon she was able to put 2 and 2 together literally. And with that we had the number sequencing done. What I didn't realize then is that it also helped with the backward numbers and before after numbers that she was going to learn next.

Backward numbers was just about reading the board the other way round... but before/after numbers unbelievably turned out to be a whole new ball game. 

Writing in Mirror Images

One of the first things I noticed when the little one started writing her first alphabets and numbers was her tendency to write mirror images - 3 would be E, C would be turned around, b would d and so on. It worried me for quite a while. I am one of those mothers who is hooked on to Google (being a journalist makes it a career for me) and all those articles I have read of autism, attention deficiency, compulsive this and compulsive that kind of freaked me out.

So what I did is sat down with my daughter's earlier Montessori teacher and tried to understand what exactly is the deal. She explained to me that structured learning, especially for a child who has come out of the Montessori style of learning can take a bit of getting used to. Its the same case with a child who may have come out of those rote-learning places as well. Just because your child writes a few letters the other way round does not mean there is something wrong with her. It just means she is experimenting with all that she is learning and wants to know why 3 can't be E or the other way round.

What worked for me was a kind of sequencing of numbers. So I told her something to the effect of "1 2 3 face one way because they play together - 4 5 6 look the other way till 1 2 and 3 are ready... that's why 7 looks at 6, 8 sits with a big face, 9 makes a bubble which bursts into a 1 and 0 making 10.

Not saying that this worked miracles the first time round, but it helped get her attention and helped her view numbers in a more playful manner. She took a while getting the sequence right, which is natural. It can get very annoying a times when the mirror images come back after a day or two of not practicing, but then we must remember that we have almost several generations worth of practice behind us and they are just starting.

I tried not to make something like a "study time" but included number games at times when she was most pliable. For us it was bath time - so  1- 10 magnets in her bath tub to play around with worked. Teaching her to play UNO and recognizing the difference between 6 and 9 because of the line worked. Air writing worked well for me too. 

Baby steps in schooling

Honestly speaking I had a pretty easy ride in school and college. Thinking back now I know I did the ICSE board till 7th... came back during the Gulf War, and continued my education in State Board. What was most difficult in all this was studying Kannada from scratch and answering board exams in three months flat and actually passing. Right through college was a straight A student and overall achiever (not boasting, but just a background) and so when it came to my daughter I didn't really think too hard...

I know scores of mothers who ransack the net and bombard "senior" parents with questions on which board is good - state, CBSE, ICSE, IB and what not. We managed to get the little one into Sacred Hearts which even now we are told is a really good school. We didn't struggle at all to do that. I knew it was ICSE, but didn't really think much of it, till I managed to let the other moms psyche me out on how difficult ICSE is "multiplication and computers in UKG", "exam stress", "things are cool till 4th and then you had it" and the like.. it started worrying me a bit. My junior is quite the happy go lucky and I didn't want to bog  her down in any way and so I too started scouring the net for info on how to work things out. Finally realized the only info around is mock question papers 6th standard onwards. But what about the little things - like how do you deal with kids writing alphabets in mirror images, or explaining to them why the phonetics of "v" and"w" sound the same but are used differently and why in the world 23 comes before 24.

And so I thought I would chronicle my adventures with ICSE board as I am going through. I have no clue what's in store and how its going to pan out... but here is my two-bit on all that I am facing and how I am handling it.

Basic facts that I have accumulated first
Why ICSE is good
- The subject range may be vast going forward, but it gives you a better grounding as your proceed
- A lot of importance is given to practicals than theory
- Encouragement is given to understanding and learning as far as possible. You can't escape rote no matter what
- If you or somewhere along the line junior plans to go abroad for graduation, ICSE stands a better chance since it is believed to be on par with foreign curriculums.
- though it did not help much in answering competitive exams in India till now, it is slowly getting there.

As for the bad - every stream has its bad point, and now that I am in this line, am not going down that road!