Thursday, August 9, 2012

learning about syllables

It's time for back to school, and time for homeschooling moms to consider curriculum and lesson plans for the year. Even if your child is only in kindergarten, you’ve got to start somewhere, right? While reading may be the ultimate goal, building pre-reading skills is crucial to later reading success. Recognizing phonemes and understanding how to teach phonics to your child will be invaluable, so consider doing some studying of your own.

Learning about syllables is important because in many cases syllables represent phonemes, the smallest bits of pronunciation in words. So learning about syllables helps kids learning to read. It also helps young children to understand where the accent goes in multi-syllable words, and it helps tremendously with spelling. Learning about syllables should definitely be a part of your kindergarten plan.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

enrichment activities for young children

Homeschooling is one thing, but what about after school hours? What can homeschoolers do as enrichment activities to further their education? One thing parents often overlook is the contribution that art and music make on a growing child’s brain. Kids need a chance to explore their artistic, creative side too. With that in mind, art classes, music lessons, and creative thinking exercises are excellent choices for homeschoolers. Even at the kindergarten level, a child's brain can benefit from the extra stimulation.


Enrichment activities that teach kids to apply the knowledge they’ve learned are also quite helpful. For example, after several lessons about counting money, have your child help you add up your purchases at the store, or help you make change. Or perhaps after learning about weather, have them read the weather forecast and let you know if you need to cover your plants to protect them from frost. Even the act of helping you to cover those plants will help them understand the concept.