I was a first time mom back in the late 80's so that brought kindergarten into my life around 1995 and it was everything that I recalled. It was a place to learn your ABC's, tie your shoe and write your name. I had no idea that what happened in 1995 to 2008 was a cross over to prepare for med school. Well, not really but times sure did change! Even though with my first child, I did have her counting to 100, writing her full name, already knew how to tie her shoe and so forth, I didn't place as much emphasis on my six year old which I regretted. Due to her diagnosed condition in June of 08, Benign Rolandic Epilepsy, I was just coming to terms of the condition and the new pulmonary condition the then one year old was diagnosed with within two week's of each other. Consequently, that summer was spend shuttling between various military and civilian doctors trying to determine the exact diagnosis, the correct medication and learning to live with two chronic medical conditions. I had no time to even think about school besides, that was their job right? Wrong!
After spending the year struggling with the medications and the correct dosing, first time separation from her mom and memory issues, she did well but wasn't up to par as most children attend daycare and preschool if not both now. Needless to say, they requested she repeat kindergarten to counter her immaturity and inability to stay on top of things whether it was due to the condition or the medication or both.
As a concerned parent, I bought numerous items to help reinforce the subjects she needed to learn and spent countless hours to bring her up to speed. One way that I found to keep her motivation up was to purchase a white board. The white board was customized per month and for doing her homework, she received one star. If she did extra work, she received another star and for anything additional such as chores, she received yet another star. On Fridays, after school, she was able to cash in her stars for a toy at Target. Sometimes it was $5 and sometimes it was up to $20. It was a great incentive to keep her on track with homework completion.
I also bought her all the various workbooks to spend extra time with. Those were fun for her as it was a challenge to complete them and provide them to her "mom teacher." I purchased Hooked on Phonics and even though it looked like a great program, it was too much for her to handle. She liked it but could only handle it for a little while at a time.
One of the better purchases were the little books full of sight words. Those were fun for her to read because she was able to read them. It inspired her so much she wrote her own book that was published. The key to her motivation is to tap into her creative side.
Need some extra resources for your little one?
This site has excellent samples to print all in themes. http://www.lovetowatch.com/http://www.lovetwoteach.com/FREEBIES.htmhttp://www.lovetwoteach.com/FREEBIES.htm breaks it down to nice packages of motivational learning.
October for example is full of great pictures to cut out and utilizes math, writing and reading which are all geared towards kindergarten and even teachers.
http://www.jmeacham.com/ also has great worksheets and themes to choose from.
http://www.kinderteacher.com/ has a variety of activities and themes to print off to provide that little extra to your child outside of school. It's also nice to be able to bring you up to speed on what they really are needing to know so you can improve their chances of success.
http://first-school.ws/preschool/printable-activities/index.htm has more great resources to print.
Counting money was another task she found difficult and with the new sizes of quarters, it's hard to teach. This is a good resource for helping with counting and identification: http://www.moneyinstructor.com/inp/inpcoinamtmatch.asp
This site has math problems and more: http://www.primarygames.com/math.htm
As I noted in an earlier post, Post It Notes has all the sight words in print form. It's a great, fun way to learn since you can put them anywhere for quick practice!
