Helpful Hints for Parents
Writing At Home
What can I do to help my child at home? Here are a few ideas to help you get them started.
How to build writing skills.
In the primary grades help them:
Reading At Home
This is still under construction.
What can I do to help my child at home? Here are a few ideas to help you get them started.
- You can write letters and cards to family and friends, and you can encourage them to write back.
- Encourage your child to write books about their favorite things.
- Keep a journal over the summer activities.
- Read Comics in the newspaper ad let your child create their own.
- Create a newspaper and articles.
- Let you child create the grocery list.
- Gather kids from neighborhood to write a play.
- Take turns writing back and forth to your child.
- Play word games
- Have a place where you display their writing.
- Publish their story.
How to build writing skills.
In the primary grades help them:
- Write left to right with letters touching the lines.
- Be sure to space between words. Use a finger or a popsicle stick.
- Use a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence.
- Use punctuation at the end of the sentence.
- Write correct beginning and ending consonant sounds.
- Use drawing, guided writing, and dictating to write.
- Understand that there are different types of writing.
Reading At Home
- Explore Books of interest to the child.
- Read at least 30 minutes per day. They can do it independently, an adult can read to them or with a partner.
- Ask lots of Questions. Make predictions, talk about the characters, the main idea, the problem and the solution, retell the story, genre, and the moral of the story.
- Make it a fun time don't make it a chore. Research topics and do activities with the books.
- Be an example and let them see you reading.
- Pick good fit books that they know most of the words and understand what they are reading.
- For beginner readers, Memorize sight words. Visualize the story in your head. Sound out the words. Ask questions before, during and after the story. Break the word into parts. Use illustrations Point and read the words. Skip the word and re-read the sentence. What would make sense.
- For the advanced reader, you can try new vocabulary words and make it a challenge to use them in a conversation. Read with expression. Explore more non-fiction books. Compare and contrast books. Discuss connections to the literature. Explore multiple books from the same author.
This is still under construction.