5 More Things You Can Do To Get Your Children Ready For School!
Following last weeks post 5 Things You Can Do To Get Your Children Ready For School! here are 5 more things you can do to help your children prepare for the school environment and their schooling experience.
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Children are naturally curious beings. They show interest in things around them, how they work, how they move, what they do. By tapping into this interest and guiding children in learning science children can understand more about themselves as a living organism as well as other living and non-living things in the world, add in energy and electricity, gravity and space (just to name a few) and the learning and natural curiosity can contribute to endless opportunities for learning.
Science is about a lot more than just being in a lab performing some form of experiment. Although there is a lot of simple experiments you can do in your home that can provide hours of enjoyment for your children, getting out into nature and observing what you see, animals and environment, are all apart of science. Science investigations follow the ‘Scientific Method’ and this can be a powerful tool to use with your children. They use the following steps:
Test your hypothesis / prediction using an experiment
Analyze your experiment data and draw conclusions
Remember that science learning never stands alone, there is possible links to so many other subjects, English, Mathematics, Geography, History and Technology just to name a few. Here are some ideas of some things you can do, remember to use the scientific method above!
Create Playdough or Oobleck
Create a tornado in a bottle
Observe animals in nature
Create a volcano that erupts!
Create parachutes using simple materials (like paper, straws and paperclips) that will keep an egg safe when dropped from a height
The world around us is often full of rich and rewarding experiences and often historical buildings, areas or events are apart of our local communities. While these types of histories might not make the history books you and your children can have a lot of fun learning about local history and the way your town/city/community has developed through history to what it is today. The focus here is not just about history however but exploring your local community and finding out what is around or available in your local area. Some people can live their whole lives in an area and not know what is just around the corner! Here are some ways to get children to explore/engage in their local communities:
Geocaching - Use the power of GPS to get your family out and about and find hidden caches along the way!
Find a list of heritage buildings or local monuments and visit them all
Explore your local community and create a map of your travels!
Find a map of your local community and go exploring!
Make a list of all the local parks and go visit them all!
Do research on the history of your town/city - Answer all the what, when, where, why questions!
(image by FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
With the increasing access and availability of playgroups many children are getting the opportunity to socialize with their peers well before school starts. But what do we do when children fight (as they often do) with their peers? Do we laugh it off? (children will be children) Do we separate them? (maybe they just don’t get along or they’ll be okay after a break) Or do we take measured steps to teach them social skills that they can use independently to help them get along with their peers now and in the future?
Here are some of the social skills children should be given opportunities to practice:
Children can practice many of these skills with you, through role playing or during play time with adults or older siblings.
Most countries have long been considered multicultural and with effects of globalization on the workforce and the opportunities for families to migrate nearly anywhere in the world, communities are becoming more and more diverse. Despite this many young children’s first up close and personal experiences with children who are of a difference cultural background to their own is in early childhood settings and schools. There are however lots of things we can do to help children to understand that there are people in the world that are different to them and these differences should be celebrated. Here are some ideas:
Read books that address cultural differences and diversity among people. A nice example of this is ‘Whoever You Are’ by Mem Fox.
Explore different cultures through exploration of history, geography, food, festivals, costumes and customs
Model the way by treating everyone equally without consideration for age, race, culture, physical ability, appearance, education or religious background and having zero tolerance to behaviors that are ‘othering’
Establish ongoing, open and respectful dialogue about diversity
Beliefs and behaviours are usually guided by the values that we hold in esteem. And everyone’s behaviours are different which shows that everyone holds different values in esteem. I’m not going to give you a list of the values that you should be teaching your children, there are lot of them and all have merits. What I want you to do is to stop and consider, what values do I think are important? What values do I appreciate in others? What values do I strive to uphold myself? What values do I not appreciate in others? From here consider what values do you want your children to have and what are you doing to actively teach these values to them?
I really recommend you sit down with a pen and paper and answer these questions and then make a plan of how you will go about actively teaching the values you choose to your children. In case you’re having trouble thinking of all the values out there, here‘s a list.
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