Tag: kindergarten

A Successful Lesson in Failure

Tracy

“By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success.”

I actually confronted the issue of failure recently with my kindergartener. In our second year of homeschooling, he hadn’t really had to face any degree of failure before.

Then, we started to struggle with addition, and my default-plan of letting my son choose his best papers to show his father wasn’t giving my husband a complete picture of how we were really doing. As I talked over our struggles with my husband, he was a little confused; after all, he saw only success and mastery. I decided I’d better make some changes to my default-plan. And that’s what led to my discovery that I was failing to truly teach about failure.

The next day, my son worked a math sheet and missed several addition problems. Together we talked through the right answers to the problems that I had checked. He reworked the problems with me and then I broke the news to him: “We’re going to show Daddy this page, because he needs to know what we have trouble with as well as what we’re doing well in.” Immediately my son burst into tears. Suddenly, I understood the unintentional lesson I was teaching my son.

Inadvertently, I was teaching him that only success brought reward, that only perfection brought the attention that he wanted. I wasn’t giving my husband the opportunity to praise my son for determination or perseverance; my son was only receiving his daddy’s praise for perfect papers. It wasn’t a lesson either my husband or I had planned to teach, and it definitely wasn’t our view of success. But regardless, my son had already shaped the idea in his head that approval was gained through perfection.

Daddy came home that day, and my son sheepishly showed him the marked-up paper. And the most beautiful lesson unfolded: a lesson of love despite imperfection, a lesson of approval for a best effort, and a lesson of praise for character rather than performance. As I watched my husband and my son interact, I couldn’t help but wonder at how close I came to missing out on this moment.

What if I had chosen to show the paper to my husband without my son’s knowledge? What if I had caved to my son’s tears and decided not to show that paper at all? What if I had continued with our trend of only showing off the best?

My son would probably not have been scarred for life had we not addressed the issue of failure in this way; but then again, he might very well have developed an attitude of success vs. failure that would begin to shape his future.

By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success. (<Tweet This)
It was a valuable lesson for all of us, and not one I would have ever thought to pencil into the curriculum or schedule into my lesson planner.

Supplementing Math

Tracy

For those of you who have been following for any length of time, you are familiar with the trouble we’ve had in math. I must say, sometimes I do get discouraged, thinking to myself, “After all, this is kindergarten. How hard can it really be?”

But to be honest, it’s not the material itself as much as the curriculum and the pace of the material presented. I love A Beka for a number of reasons, and their math is a year ahead of nearly every curriculum I’ve looked at recently (which provided some peace of mind to my struggles). For my son, who is an early kindergartener (he turns five in just a few weeks), the new material moves too quickly. Before he has a handle on one thing, he has three more concepts to learn.

So this year has been a series of using and not using A Beka. I get stuck, pull it out, and follow it to the letter for awhile. We’ll slowly make some progress only to be land-blasted by a million new things before we’re ready. So, I’ll shelve it again. We’ve done this in a continual cycle all year, loosely following the scope and sequence all the way.

Where are we right now? A Beka is back on the shelf.

What are we doing for math? Supplemental worksheets, games, and creative drill. I’m loving it, and so is my son.

In my search for a new curriculum or a supplement, I stumbled upon Math Mammoth, and I really love her style and ideas. But what I have appreciated most are her sample worksheets. Visit her site, sign up for either of her email subscription options, and she sends you files that include 300 worksheets and samples from 1st-6th grade. (Her first grade is equivalent to A Beka’s K5.) Because her pace is slower, her worksheets provide a lot of drill and plenty of time to grasp new concepts. Plus, she opens each segment with game ideas and websites for even more reinforcement. I’ve used a lot of her ideas and been inspired with a few of my own.

The result? He’s finally getting some of his addition concepts down! Slow but steady progress.

 

 

Number bonds have been key: discovering different ways to put two numbers together to produce the same sum. Taking her ideas, I’ve had him copy combinations down from his Dot Cards. For instance, from this card he tells me and then writes 4+3 and 3+4. We’ve also played this with our counting bears. I’ll hand him five or six bears, and he writes down all the combinations he can make by grouping the bears into different stacks. He loves the hands-on; I love the subtle drill. And best of all, he’s getting it!

The other night at supper, he was telling me all of the different combinations he could make from the four pineapple chunks on his plate. I couldn’t have been happier!

 

Another fun Math Mammoth game idea that I’ve played with both kids (with great success) suggests that you select a certain number of manipulatives (we played with six counting bears). Then, players cover their eyes while one player takes some bears (or other manipulative) and hides what he has taken. We each took turns taking away. Then, the rest of the players uncover their eyes and try to guess how many were taken.

Am I going to purchase Math Mammoth in the future? Absolutely! She has her material split up in two ways: by grade level and by topic. I can easily purchase the worksheets for the topics that I need to supplement, and the supplements are really cheap (starting at $2.oo for a download).

Though I wouldn’t have chosen the difficulties of this year, I must say that I have loved all of the ways I’ve learned to make math fun! It’s been a very rewarding supplement to the necessary drills.

 

 

Pom-pom Place Value

Tracy

I’ve loved our pom-pom magnets that we made awhile back. But up to this point, Little One has been the only one to use them. So the other day, I pulled them out for our place value lesson.

On our magnetic white board, I drew the three place value houses. Little One, who is always wanting to be in the big middle of Big Brother’s lessons anyway, was allowed to choose how many pom-poms went in each house. Then, my son wrote the number below the houses and read it off to us. He’s always so impressed when the numbers are larger than one hundred.

It was so much fun! I think place value is my favorite math concept to teach—so many fun ways to practice it.

Reading Options for Beginning Readers

Tracy2 Comments on Reading Options for Beginning Readers

It really is a great problem to have—not enough books for a voracious reader. But, the problem isn’t easy to solve. That’s why, when I noticed my son only had two more books left in his kindergarten curriculum, my heart skipped a beat and I panicked for just a second. Then I remembered some of the great reading books I have around the house that I’ll be able to use.

But I got to thinking that I’m probably not the only one encountering this problem. So I thought I’d share a few suggestions for your beginning readers.

  • First, though it seems very obvious, check your own home library. You might be surprised what your little reader will be able to pick up and read. My son constantly surprises me with the sight words and advanced phonics sounds that he can pick up simply from the context of the story and pictures. For instance, with very little help, he tackled Are You My Mother? the other day. I was in shock. So definitely check what you have before buying something new.
  • Next, I love the A Beka little readers. They are very reasonably priced and the perfect starter readers. For K4, purchase Little Books 1-10 and Little Owl Books set of 8.  For K5, the Basic Phonics Readers set is available.
  • Another awesome set of readers is the Reading for Fun Enrichment Library of over 55 little books. Look for it used. I was blessed to have inherited the set from my mom, the same set I used as a child. Talk about a valuable investment!
  • I’ve also read of a number of homeschoolers who have used the Bob Books and loved them, though I have not seen them personally. You might also check to see if your local library carries these titles.

My last suggestions are actually some books that I just found through Usborne Books. When the Very First Reading Series arrived at our house, you would have thought it was Christmas.

My son doing a "happy" dance

These readers are extremely cool. The whole concept is that the parent and child share the reading experience. Here’s how…

Sample spread from Book 1 of the Usborne Very First Reading Series - Pirate Pat

 

The series includes 15 hardback books that progressively become more difficult and have the child reading a little more in each book. By the end of the series, the child is reading the whole story. The set comes with a separate parent’s guide, as well as instruction and comprehension games within each book. The Very First Reading website also includes additional parent resources.

The one down-side is that the books are not sold individually, which means that this set is an investment.

But another great option for kindergarten/first grade readers are the Easy Readers from Usborne. I’ve gotten a couple of these for my kids, and they have been a huge hit. The books are paperback with fun illustrations and even fold out pages. And what excites my son the most is the feeling that he is reading a real book all by himself.

I’d also love to know what books you use with your little reader, as my son might be reading us out of house and homeschool very soon!

Note: I am an Usborne consultant, because I just loved the books too much to afford them any other way! The links to Usborne books will link you to my sales site.

How to have fun with flashcards

Tracy1 Comment on How to have fun with flashcards

I love to use flashcards with the kids. It might sound dry and boring and really old-fashioned, but we do have fun with them. And the kids respond really well to them. Here are a few ideas of how we use our flashcards.

  • I try to introduce new flashcards only one or two at a time. We talk about the new flashcard, and then I hide the new card in the stack, close to the front. Every time the new flashcard shows up, the kids stand up and shout “hello” to the new card (I join in with them until they are doing fairly well on their own). Then, I hide the card again just a little bit further in the stack. We do this several times depending on how many cards there are in the stack. For example, I just added the number 8 to the little one’s stack of numbers flashcards. We talked about the number eight, counted to eight, traced the eight on the card. Then, I hid the card about 2 to 3 cards from the front as we both said, “Goodbye, Mr. Eight.” When she got to the card and recognized it as our new card, she jumped up and we both said, “Hello, Mr. Eight” and then we hid it again.
  • Another game we’ve played with flashcards is our matching game. This works particularly well with the capital and small letter flashcards. First, I spread all of the cards out on the floor in random order. Her job is to match the baby letter to the daddy letter. When she makes a set, she hands the cards to me and tells me the names and sounds of the letters.

  • My son loves to beat his own time, to see how fast he can get through a big stack of cards. But every now and then, he gets stuck on a new card; and I have to get really creative. This last week the cards that gave us trouble were his new phonics sounds “ou in out” and “ow in owl.” He kept wanting to say short a or long o for the sound. After a few days of failed attempts, I finally thought of the wolf cry. He loved it. And the sound really stuck for him. So every time those cards come up in the stack we howl like wolves, and he remembers to use the right sound.

You can have fun with flashcards and drills. It’s all in how you choose to use them. So, it’s your turn. What are some fun ideas that you have used with your flashcards and drills?

Homemade Abacus

Tracy2 Comments on Homemade Abacus

My son has been struggling a little bit (okay, a lot) with math lately, and specifically with before and after. So, I put together this rather quaint number line/abacus out of what I had around the house. It’s not much to look at, but it works great! And we’ve had a lot of fun counting our numbers, practicing before and after, and even doing a little addition.

I took an old wire hanger, some mini clothes pins, and a black ink pen for the project. Numbers 1-35 fit nicely on the wire with plenty of room to move them back and forth, and that will keep us plenty busy for awhile, I’m sure.

He did really well using the numbered side for before and after; however, he had a much harder time doing addition. The written numbers threw him off. For addition, I turned the hanger around to the blank side of the clothes pins.

Also, another trick for the addition families that is working so much better. Rather than memorizing them by 1+ or 2+ families as most teach them, we’ve reverted to the A Beka method of teaching the families by the sum:

One Family

0+1=1

1+0=1

Two Family

0+2=2

1+1=2

2+0=2

Three Family

0+3=3

1+2=3

2+1=3

3+1=3

And you get the idea from there. Math keeps me on my toes. I’m constantly on the search for something to help my son with math. So if anyone else has any stunning ideas, I am very open to them. Please feel welcome to comment or email me with your words of wisdom.

Silly Sentence Copywork

Tracy2 Comments on Silly Sentence Copywork

One of the things I have added to our schedule for the sake of variety is some silly sentence copywork.

  • My First Sentence Building is one fun activity we have included about once a week. The different sentence parts are color-coded, so it is simple for my four year old to match the color-coded word or phrase to the multi-colored bar, creating his own silly sentences. “The rat hops.” “His dog swims.” “A cat naps.” Then, my son writes his silly creations on the wipesheet, and I inspect his copywork after I finish working with his sister.
  • Another favorite are some silly sentence puzzles that my mom picked up for us. It basically works on the same concept as above, except that, instead of color-coded, the pieces are shaped to only fit together a certain way. “The pig ate peas in a hat.” “The fox made jam on a boat.” “The frog drove a tractor on a cake.” Then, my son writes his silliness on either a wipeboard or some tablet paper for me to inspect later.

He has worked very well on his own with this activity, though he has a very hard time doing it silently. After all, it’s just too funny to keep it all to himself.