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.
