Fall 2022

It's never too early to promote good learning habits. Parent involvement can be simple and can start very early. When parents get involved in learning, children are more successful. Help your child get off to a good start in school by creating habits like these at home: * Remind your child of rules and systems at home. Such as “Reading before playing” “Cleaning up before television or screen time.” This shows them that learning is a top priority. Also, provide them a comfortable place to read, draw or do homework without distractions. * Take advantage of car time: play word games with your child. Start with something simple like, take turns thinking of opposites (up) (down), rhyming games - give two words, do they rhyme, thumbs up or thumbs down. Depending on where your child is at you might ask what rhymes with ___? Work on counting forward and backwards. For an extra challenge, have your children count from a number other than 1. Try an alphabet search. Look around your surroundings, and find something that starts with a letter A, take turns finding letters (in order or out of order). Play Eye Spy: describe an object in clear view to your child and have them guess what it is. Then let them take a turn. Expect the obvious! * Build hand-eye coordination: Have your child toss a balled up sock into a laundry basket. Make a ring toss: Cut the centers out of paper places and let your child toss the rings onto water bottles. You can make the challenge more difficult by having them take a giant step backwards after each successful toss. * Sharing at dinnertime is an activity that can go beyond passing the platter. Ask your children to think of one new thing they learned that day. It might spark an interesting conversation at the table. Hopefully these suggestions provide some free and practical ways to promote school readiness and parental involvement.