Keep minds sharp over summer

Angel — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 07:22:49 +0000

Ways to continue your child’s education over summer

For most children, summer is a time of relaxing and forgetting about school and homework. The last thing on their minds is books, studying and tests. They just want to have fun.

As parents of learning disabled children, however, we worry about our children losing momentum and learning skills. We worry that if we don’t continue their education through summer, our children will be even further behind when school starts again in the fall.

We also know that our children struggle with learning, and if we try to get them to learn something during a time that is supposed to be a break for them, they will resent us and may even resist as fiercely as a cat resisting a bathtub full of water.

Make summer learning so fun they won’t know they’re learning

The trick to continue a child’s education over summer is to make learning fun. Toss the workbook pages, textbooks and studying and just have fun. You do this with toys, games, TV shows and everyday living.

Educational toys

I put these K'Nex Education toys in front of my son and he went to town with them.

One of my son’s favorite kind of toys is building toys. Just playing with building toys can be an education because you need an engineer’s mind to create structures that are sound and will withstand the elements (in our case that means dogs running by).

I recently discovered that K’Nex has a number of educational sets. The K’Nex Education toys are fun and are great for teaching simple machines and physical science. All I had to do was put the set down in front of my son, open the instruction booklet and stand back. He began working right away like a man on a mission. He can’t resist a building challenge and that was what I was counting on. Even though the box had the word "Education" big as life on it, he had to build because he loves it so.

Educational games

Another tactic I use to keep the education train rolling is finding games that are educational and fun.

There are logic and strategy games like Qwirkle and Blokus or word games like Bananagrams or Quiddler. There are also subject-specific games like Scrambled States that helps with U.S. geography or Skeletons in the Closet that teaches the skeletal system. There are plenty of game options available to help your children keep their minds sharp during summer while also having fun.

Educational TV

Of course, let’s not forget about the wonders of educational television! Most of the shows on Discover, National Geographic and History channels are filled with excitement, cool animations and loads of action, that kids forget they are learning anything. There’s always something on these channels and others like them to keep kids entertained and educated throughout the summer. If you have something specific in mind that you want your children to learn, you can always peruse past episodes of these kinds of TV shows on iTunes. There are some shows that are free to download, so keep a lookout for those.

Speaking of free, there are also a great number of podcasts and video podcasts you can find on iTunes that are educational and filled with fun and excitement just like the TV shows. These are harder to sift through because many gold nuggets don’t have brand names attached to them like TV shows do. But if you have the time, try out a few to see what you and your children like.

Educational living

Lastly, there’s the education of everyday living. Life itself is an education. You truly do learn something every day. Doing things like taking nature walks, cooking, planting a garden, going to museums or even taking a vacation yield lots of educational opportunities.

A walk along a nature path will give you and your children plenty to talk about and plenty to discover.
On nature walks or hikes, you can study wildlife, plantlife, bugs and rocks. You can talk about how the earth was made, what plants are safe to eat in the wild, how animals in the wild survive and things like that.

You can discuss the beauty of nature or even the harsh reality of nature if the topic arises (especially if it starts to rain while you are walking). You can look at the different ways animals or bugs protect themselves (coloring, speed, camouflage, exoskeletons, etc.). Or you can look at the different kinds of rocks you see and try to determine if they are igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary.
While cooking, you can teach math skills by measuring ingredients and discussing what different measurements mean. You can discuss the different tools used to measure dry ingredients and wet ingredients. You can go over how many cups are in a gallon or how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon. You can also teach new vocabulary while working with measurements or going over different cooking techniques, such as the difference between julienned and chopped, or whisking versus stirring.

Another great education in cooking is the science involved. While waiting for water to boil, talk about what temperature it boils at or about the three states of matter by looking at how water can become those three states. You can also talk about mixtures and solutions while tossing a salad or dissolving salt or sugar in your batter.
If you are planting a vegetable garden, you will have plenty of opportunity to discuss the need for food by all living things. You can talk about the plants’ needs as well as your needs. You could also extend the discussion into the need for bees and other pollinators. If you are planting an organic garden, you will want to discuss why it is important and how it helps you and your family live healthier lives. You may want to discuss the vitamins and minerals you will get from the different foods you are planting.

If you are planting a flower garden, talk about design, color choice or wanting to provide a fresh smell to the air or attract butterflies and hummingbirds. If you have a budding landscape artist in your child, have him or her help you choose where to plant and maybe even choose the flowers with you while you are shopping.
Trips to an art museum, botanic garden, natural history museum or even campsites or vacation resorts are wonderful opportunities to learn. Just be prepared to engage your child in conversation about whatever it is you are seeing or experiencing. The act of talking about it, discussing it and formulating opinions and ideas is an education itself. You have the opportunity to get philosophical or theoretical with some of these discussions. They could be very fun and informative for the whole family.

If you have the opportunity, take a guided tour on some of these trips. The guide will be a huge source of knowledge for both you and your child and will be happy to provide all the information you need and maybe even some folklore to make it all very fun. You may want to encourage your child to ask questions or answer questions the guide has. This will be very helpful for children who have trouble speaking up in class during school, and help him or her break out of that shell.

Have fun learning

The key to summer learning is fun learning. Find as many ways as you can to engage your children in educational tasks that are fun, and the learning will never stop.

Multi-sensory lessons are best

Angel — Sun, 22 May 2011 10:58:43 +0000

Teaching the multi-sensory way means getting creative

Multi-sensory teaching is by the far the best way to help children with learning differences thoroughly grasp and even master a subject or lesson.

Why is that, you ask? Well, from the beginning of humanity we’ve always learned about the world around us through our senses. Our eyes pick up visual clues, our ears take in the sounds, our hands and skin feel tactile clues, and our noses and tongues take in smell and taste. Our minds gather the data, assess it and develop theories about it. In this way, we as humanity have survived, grown and developed into what we are today.

Getting creative to make a lesson multi-sensory can be fun and rewarding for you and your students.

So why should our education be so different for us today? Almost all of our education now comes from books. Just reading books. For some it is magical. For others it is boring. And for our learning disabled children, it is often heart-breaking.

If you bring other forms of learning into the fold, however, you pique a child’s interest by involving their other senses. They get to truly learn again, the way they were meant to learn.

What does 3.1415926535 … mean to a child with dyscalculia? It means nothing. Why should Pi simply be a long list of never-ending numbers when you can eat pie to describe it? As you are cutting up the pie you can talk about the never-ending cycle of a circle. You can talk about how the number to describe it can never end as well. It will all make sense if you use the child’s other senses.

A little creativity goes a long way

When you consider how you are going to teach a child with a learning disability, think about how else you might share your knowledge. How can you help your students see, hear, feel, taste or smell the lesson? Sometimes the answer is sitting right in front of you: you can teach impressionist painting by practicing it.

But sometimes the answer takes a little creativity. Dig a little deeper into your lesson and see what might pop up.

When teaching about Mayan culture, you could bring in some fresh corn and discuss their cultivation of it and how important it was to them. It probably is in your lesson somewhere, but maybe it needs to be the star if it will help teach the students.

When teaching math, nothing helps better than blocks, cubes or other devices that children can hold and manipulate.

For reading, it helps if children can have control of the letters. Letter magnets are magnificent tools for teaching reading. Small black letters on a white page move around too much for dyslexic students, but bright letters that the students can move with their hands usually stay in one place in the minds of dyslexics and they can be more easily read.

If you need help coming up with multi-sensory teaching aids for any of your lessons, feel free to contact me. I’ll be glad to help.

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