Ms. McCormick's Class
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Ways to build your child's skills...
1. Make reading a priority. Read lots.....individually and as a family.
Yes, on-line reading counts!!
2. Explore different reading genres -- fiction varieties (mystery, adventure, graphic novels, historic, comics, realistic, fantasy) non-fiction varieties (biography, informational), newspapers, magazines, instruction manuals.
3. Talk about what you read. Ask open-ended questions to get the conversation going!
4. Ask your child to explain his ideas....get him to start looking into the "why"s of what he is doing and thinking.
5. Play board games to build literacy skills. Scrabble and Boggle are terrific for word exploration and study. Taboo and Scattergories are wonderful for brainstorming ideas.
6. Play card and board games to build numeracy skills. Chess, checkers, Parcheesi, Mancala, and cribbage are all great for supporting strategic thinking.
7. Review basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts in the car....there's no escape!!
8. Encourage your child to join you in the kitchen for cooking and baking....decoding recipes is authentic reading, and measuring out portions for ingredients is authentic math.
9. Help your child to budget her money....whether through a job, allowance, or birthday / holiday gifting. Discuss how much to save, how much to spend, and how much with which to just have fun!!
10. Strongly support whatever writing your child enjoys......journaling, e-mailing, list-making, diagramming, letters to friends and family. Let him see the writing that YOU do.....grocery lists, To-Do lists, letters, thank-you notes, holiday cards, e-mails.
11. Encourage your child to keyboard properly (BBC Dance Mat is a wonderful website to learn appropriate technique....there is a link on the Student and Parent resource page).
12. When your child asks a question, respond with, "I don't really know....how could we find out the answer to that??"
Yes, on-line reading counts!!
2. Explore different reading genres -- fiction varieties (mystery, adventure, graphic novels, historic, comics, realistic, fantasy) non-fiction varieties (biography, informational), newspapers, magazines, instruction manuals.
3. Talk about what you read. Ask open-ended questions to get the conversation going!
4. Ask your child to explain his ideas....get him to start looking into the "why"s of what he is doing and thinking.
5. Play board games to build literacy skills. Scrabble and Boggle are terrific for word exploration and study. Taboo and Scattergories are wonderful for brainstorming ideas.
6. Play card and board games to build numeracy skills. Chess, checkers, Parcheesi, Mancala, and cribbage are all great for supporting strategic thinking.
7. Review basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts in the car....there's no escape!!
8. Encourage your child to join you in the kitchen for cooking and baking....decoding recipes is authentic reading, and measuring out portions for ingredients is authentic math.
9. Help your child to budget her money....whether through a job, allowance, or birthday / holiday gifting. Discuss how much to save, how much to spend, and how much with which to just have fun!!
10. Strongly support whatever writing your child enjoys......journaling, e-mailing, list-making, diagramming, letters to friends and family. Let him see the writing that YOU do.....grocery lists, To-Do lists, letters, thank-you notes, holiday cards, e-mails.
11. Encourage your child to keyboard properly (BBC Dance Mat is a wonderful website to learn appropriate technique....there is a link on the Student and Parent resource page).
12. When your child asks a question, respond with, "I don't really know....how could we find out the answer to that??"
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