March 2009 - Always Learning

Always Learning

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Read Along CD books are fast becoming the favourite in our household. It is a great way to create reading independence for your child and it helps to give them the courage to sit down and read books by themselves.

Many classics and new tales are being republished as cd stories and they are great to take travelling when it involves a lengthy car or plane trip.

Current favourites in our house include Amelia Bedelia, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and Caps for Sale.

Statistics from Read Faster demonstrate that out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year. The website also says that in a class of 20 students, few if any teachers can find even 5 minutes of time in a day to devote to reading with each student. All the more reason that reading should be encouraged first in the home rather than the classroom.

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Posted By: Michelle Sweeney - Category: Age 3-4, Age 4-6, Age 6-8, Books, Reading

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Play Money

March 17th 2009 00:56

Using play money for maths can make it easier for little brains to understand. If you are unable to buy sets of play money then consider creating your own.

Or failing that, Donna Young has play money already created for maths purposes. You just need to print it out and voila - you are ready to go.

The page gives you denominations of ones, tens, hundreds, thousands up to millions. 24 bills are featured on each page and her recommendation is to print the differing denominations out on different coloured paper to make it easier to sort the bills.

Oh what would I do for a one million dollar note!

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Posted By: Michelle Sweeney - Category: Age 3-4, Age 4-6, Age 6-8, Computer Based, Maths

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Homeschooling

March 11th 2009 04:18

As parents we have a lot of responsibilities in regard to our children and one of them is our educational responsibilities. At what age should we send them to kindergarten, which school should they attend or indeed should we even send them to school as homeschooling is on the rise all the world over.

Homeschooling or home education is on the rise with a reported statistic of between 20,000 and 30,000 children homeschooled in Australia, 50,000 in UK, 60,000-80,000 in Canada and a staggering 2,000,000 in USA. These figures are approximations but it is clear that many people are taking the subject of home learning very seriously and looking to it as a viable educational option for their children.

These figures are still small per capita and admittedly out of everybody I know, only 3 people including myself are currently homeschooling or looking into the option but as time goes on, the figure will grow.

Reasons for homeschooling children vary in each individual case but the two most common reasons for taking this approach seem to be that parents or guardians feel they can give a better education at home or they choose to home educate for religious reasons. Other reasons for choosing this option include poor learning environments at school, the school not being challenging enough for the child, the child may have special needs, family or career choices for parents, transportation or convenience of home schooling or an objection to what the school is teaching.

The internet makes homeschooling much more appealing to many as there are many websites and blogs focussed purely on this very subject. These sites make research, educational tools and computer based activities within reach and with the advent of online shopping, books and school related tools can be purchased from basically anywhere in the world.

But this is just one of the many options available. Homeschooling may not fit into the parent's lifestyle and a more traditional structured method of schooling may even be better for the child.

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Posted By: Michelle Sweeney - Category: Age 3-4, Age 4-6, Age 6-8, Age 9-11

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Word Search Creator

March 3rd 2009 02:09

I used to love word searches as a child and use them often in my ESL teaching classroom but they are also a great activity for the children at home during work time or play time.

For a free and easy to use word search creator, I recommend the one at Design Your Home School. It really doesn't get any simpler than this.

You can also change the difficulty level to suit your child/children and the puzzle has the capacity to allow for the search of up to 15 words.

Happy puzzling!

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Posted By: Michelle Sweeney - Category: Age 4-6, Age 6-8, Age 9-11, Computer Based, Reading

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