Activities for Home

Learning does not end in the classroom. Children need help and support at home to succeed in their studies. Try to create a quiet place for your child to study, and carve out time everyday when your child can concentrate on reading, writing, and math uninterrupted by friends, brothers or sisters, or other distractions. You should also try and sit down with your child at least once a week for 15 to 30 minutes while he or she works on homework. This will keep you informed about what your child is working on, and it will help you be the first to know if your child needs help with specific topics. By taking these small steps, you will be helping your child become successful both in and outside the classroom. Working together as a team will go a long way toward not only guiding our students to academic success but also insuring that they become independent lifelong learners.

Additionally, here are some activities you can do with your child to support learning at home:

English Language Arts & Literacy:

  • Read at home every day and assist your child by reading every other paragraph. Encourage your child to read to younger siblings, cousins, or other children you know.

  • Make reading a fun part of your child's daily routine. Set aside quiet time, with no phones, computers, or other distractions.

  • Have your child write a thank you note or letter to family members or friends.

  • Ask your librarian to suggest books about people or places that are important to your child or family that you can read together.

  • Encourage your child to explain what he or she has just read.

  • Pick a “word of the day” each day starting with a different letter. Have your child write the word and look for other things beginning with the same letter.

  • Work with your child to come up with as many words as you can think of that contain a certain vowel – like /a/. Then, review the difference between the long /a/ sound, like ape and hail, and the short /a/ sound, like apple and hat. Revisit the original list of words you came up with and highlight the long /a/ sounds in yellow, and the short /a/ sounds in green. Then practice enunciating them together, so that your child hears the differences between the long and short sounds. When you're done, repeat the activity using a different vowel.

Mathematics:

  • Look for “word problems” in real life.

  • When saving for a purchase, compare the cost of the item to the amount of money you have; then ask your child to determine how much more money he or she needs to buy the item.

  • When measuring your child's height, ask how many inches he or she has grown since the very first measurement.

  • Play “draw the shape.” For example, ask your child to draw a hexagon with one side longer than the others, or ask him or her to shade in a quarter of a rectangle.

  • Play the “I’m thinking of a number” game. For example, “I’m thinking of a number that makes 11 when added to 8. What is my number?”

  • Involve your child when you notice yourself using division to “work backward” in the times tables such as determining how many candies each child will get if 36 candies are shared equally among nine children at a party, or determining how many six-inch lengths can be cut from a string 18 inches long.