Summer Learning

I notice that the "teacher" aspect of this blog is severely lacking. I have been trying to find time to work on my portfolio and create lesson plans to share, but obviously not trying hard enough. This should change this summer. I will start courses in August and plan to work with my kids over the summer.

My daughter is struggling with reading, so part of my plan for summer is to come up with activities that help her work through it. She is able to read, but reading comprehension is another skill and that is where she struggles. She's a very concrete girl, when it comes to learning. If you can show her something physically, she is able to do it, but something more abstract (like remembering a part of a story) is harder. This explains why her math grade is stellar but reading is keeping her off the honor roll.

My son will be starting Kindergarten this fall, and though we are all excited about this I believe that he needs a little more practice in order to adapt to the classroom. It also helps to have lesson plans for him while I’m working with his sister. We started an Alphabet book last year, and I am going to create a new one this year. I will put the book together next week and will share it then.

If I don't make goals, I won't reach them. I also have high hopes in May that tend to get shelved by the end of June. I don’t want this year to be the same. I know that my kids need some form of structure during the summer, so I am working on it now.

Summer Goals:

Create an Alphabet book

Participate in at least 2 Summer Reading programs

Create a story-telling board

Keep a Summer Vacation journal

I may add to this list, but will stop there. My lists tend to get long because there is so much I want to do, but then that makes it seem impossible. As I cross things off, I’ll add more. If you haven’t started planning for the summer, you may want to look into some programs. It is said that kids can lose up to a whole MONTH of learning over summer break.

The Factor Tree

When you start to try different products at home to give reviews and spread the word about them, it can be either feast or famine! There can be a lot of wait time to get something to try, then you're trying multiple products at once and trying to keep up with telling others about it and reporting back to the companies.

This is one of my busiest times! Not only have I been able to review Tom's of Maine Wicked Fresh toothpaste, and a Just Dance 2 Houseparty, but now I get to have my kids try out The Factor Tree.



When I heard about The Factor Tree, I was excited to try it out! I am both a student learning to become a teacher, and a mother of young children who are in school. Anything that could help them learn math is an asset! They also love to use the computer so I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for them to learn and for me to be able to track their progress.

Overall, I was disappointed. Though I have clicked around the website, I have not seen anything that would help entice children in. The set up seems to be in test format where students are able to take "real" tests and "practice" tests and the scores are given emailed to parents. Though I do think that the way the scores are tracked could be helpful, since they are listed based on the concepts being tested, I do not think this format will help my children learn.

It is not interesting to them. Though they get to be on the computer, just typing in what time is displayed or filling in the blanks of math problems is boring and by question 20 they are more than "over" the whole experience.

I think the concept is wonderful and think that with some improvements it could be something that would be wonderful for both parents and educators to use when working with children, but as it is I do not think it is something I will continue to use past the free trial.

Would you like to try it and see how you feel? Use "BZZAGENT" for a 2-week trial at thefactortree.com and let me know what you think!

The Last day of Kindergarten

Today is my daughter's last day of Kindergarten. I feel like this is more difficult than her first day. For some reason First Grade just seems so much bigger than Kindergarten, like once she steps foot into that classroom time will just fast forward. She is excited though, just like her first day.

She has grown and learned so much in just a year. Her teacher even notes that she is ready for first grade on her report card. I plan to work with her this summer so that she doesn't regress and so that she is still able to jump right in to first grade and not feel overwhelmed.

One of the first things she'll be doing this summer is writing in a journal. I have a plan spiral notebook and I plan to have her write a few times a week. She may have topics to write about or just talk about what she did that day. I think it will help with sentence structure and getting used to writing a lot, rather than tracing or having to mimic what the teacher writes.



We also have a word wall that has many of the common sight words to for her to work on. The ones that go on the wall are the ones she knows. I am also using a sight word list to help expand the list of the ones she knows. In addition to sight words, I want to help her learn more vowel digraphs and consonant blends rather than have her continue to sound out each letter separately. With all the Reading Clubs and activities happening at our local Library, we will be reading a lot together and working on reading comprehension as well as reading on her own.

I am still trying to determine how we will approach math this summer. The only thing her teacher says she needs to work on more is the concept of "one more" and "one less" so I know we will be working more with that.

She has done so well this year in both adjusting to a new school and in learning so much. I bet that on Monday morning she will ask why she can't go to school.

Ready for PreK

My 3 year old just graduated from the 3-4 class at his preschool today. They had an awards ceremony and it was really bittersweet to watch him stand up there and receive awards. He got certificates for counting (he can up to 12), knowing shapes (triangle, star, square, circle, diamond, heart, rectangle, oval), and knowing colors (red, yellow, blue, green, purple, pink, orange, black, brown, and white). I am so proud of him for working so hard this year.

I was also able to see from the ceremony what areas he could work on (since they don't do report cards). He was not able to identify all uppercase letters, say every letter, or identify numbers visually, so I plan to work on those areas this summer when I work with both my children.

Some ideas I have are an Alphabet Book (inspired by the creative letters that are on No Time for Flashcards). I plan to do each letter at least once and put them together in a binder to review. I may use some of the lessons shown there but also may adapt them to what we're doing on a given week. I can do the same for numbers. I also plan to have other alphabet related activities like spotting different letters when we are out an about, finding things that begin with certain letters, and more. It wasn't until today that I was able to see where he could use extra work, so I haven't planned a lot for him yet.

I'm just so proud of him and all he's done this year. I love that he loves school and I hope that stays the same for years to come.