I just read a great book by Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids. Sean Covey is the son of Stephen R. Covey who authored the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
In his book Sean Covey uses lovable animal characters who live in 7 Oaks to teach your child responsibility, planning ahead, respect for others, teamwork, and balance. There are seven stories in his book, each story teaches one of the habits.
In this short video I am going to show you how to play Mystery Word with your child. The purpose of this game is to help your child learn spelling patterns in words by making smaller words out of a larger word. In this video I used an eight letter word, but you may start with a six or seven letter word if you choose.
School buses are a great way to transport your child to school, so are car pools. However, today I want to remind parents that taking your child to school (at least maybe once a week) is a great idea too.
What happens when you drive your child to school and then walk into the building with him/her?
You can wish him a good day and tell him one more time that you love him as he walks into his classroom.
You see your child in his environment. You see his locker,his desk, his friends etc.
You can stop into the room and smile at the teacher and wish her or him a good day. (Teachers need to see your happy face once in a while too.)
You let the other children know that by your presence that you care about what is happening in your child’s day.
I am not advocating that you be a “helicopter” parent, hovering over your child on her way into school. Let your child hang up his own jacket, put her own books away, and sharpen his own pencils. The idea is not to create a child that depends on your being there. The idea is to show support and interest in your child’s day.
Children know how to read lots of words. Yet there are many words that they need to learn yet. How can your child use what he knows to figure out what he does not know?
In this video I will demonstrate how you can help your child take a word that he can read to help him read the words that are more difficult. I learned this idea from Carson-Dellosa’s Four Block Reading.
If your child is now back into school, he/she will soon be getting that first spelling list of words. For some children, spelling comes easily. They look at a word for a few seconds and know how to spell it. This is not true for most children. Most children need to study the words.
Since all children have their own learning style, they will learn to spell in different ways. Here are some suggestions that have worked. Maybe you can decide which works best for your child.
Write the spelling word, look at the word,cover it up and try to write it without looking. If it is spelled incorrectly, correct it and write it again so that you remember the right way and not the wrong way.
Use two crayons, markers or colored pencils of different colors. Write the spelling word using one color for the vowels and one for the consonants. This helps your child see where the vowels are so that “first” does not get spelled “frist” or “great” does not get spelled “gerat”.
For children who are very verbal, spelling the words aloud works well. And spelling the word aloud while walking around works for children who like to move about.
Does your child like to bounce a ball? Have your child bounce a ball while spelling, one bounce for each letter. Likewise, jumping rope while spelling works too.
Does your child dislike writing? Get out a Scrabble game and use the letter tiles to spell the words on the list. Magnetic letters accomplish the same idea.
Just a few more do’s and don’t’s:
Don’t send your child to his room and say learn your spelling words. They need your help and interest in what they are doing.
Do start learning the words at the beginning of the week. Don’t start the night before the test. Children who start early in the week and continue each night, will remember the words for longer period rather than just for the test. The goal is to put those spelling words into the long term memory rather than their short term memory.
Do encourage your child to do his best. Praise your child’s efforts not how he does on the final test. If your child studied hard and still gets some wrong, he is still a winner!
If anyone needs some ideas on what words third graders should be able to spell. You can look at the list I used last year before I retired.
If you have any ideas that you use to help your child, please post a comment. I would love to hear from you.
