Let Your Child Marinate in Words

If you are anywhere near a public school you can feel the test anxiety.  It makes me crazy and of course I have my opinion of how it could be handled and not stress everyone out!  BUT  I will save that for another day.

While visiting with some kindergarten teachers about their students and test results, they realized one of the areas that was particularly low was vocabulary.  Personally I believe it's a tricky thing to test, especially on a computer, but the world testing powers  didn't ask me.  Now we can argue the merits of even taking a test on a computer and all the variables that are at play, but again we will save that for another day.

The teachers and I were talking about how to teach or really expose children to vocabulary.  Because the words are random, you can't 'preteach' every word.  A word that is on the assessment one month may be randomly replaced with a different word the next month.  So what to do?

Ideally all children will come to school with a vast vocabulary.   While that would be great it doesn't happen.  Parents are overwhelmed and intimidated by vocabulary - and you shouldn't be.  What is important is to expose children to words.  So to start with,  just talk to your child.  When I say talk to your child, I mean use your grown up voice.  Don't talk baby talk to your child.  Look for opportunities to use real words rather than made up silly words.  For example, if your child has a scratch, instead of saying, Oh you have an ouy or a boo boo, try saying,  Oh you have a scratch.  I can guarantee your child will only encounter boo boo at your house but will encounter scratch everywhere else.  Sometimes a food can be yummy, but it might be luscious, or tangy or spicy.

The more children are exposed to words the more likely they will pick them up.  If you don't believe me think about a word or words your young child has repeated that you know you didn't teach him or her.

Think about synonyms for words you probably over use.  Do you always tell your daughter she looks pretty? Does she ever look glamorous, or sophisticated, or beautiful or spunky?  What about your son?   Does he ever look dapper?

What are some other ways to say good game or you played well.  We know from research that children respond better to specific language, for example I like the way you caught that ball instead of good job. Perhaps the game was intense, or a nail biter.

With the warmer weather, it's an ideal time to be outside observing nature.  Everything isn't a bug! There are crickets and grasshoppers and cicadas.  Some are insects and some are not.

Maybe at the store there weren't a lot of people,  maybe there were hordes of people or maybe it was a throng of people.

One of the easiest ways to increase your child's vocabulary is to read good literature to them.  Some of my favorite authors are listed on my blog site.

When we marinate meat, we let it sit for hours, soaking up the rich marinade.  That's what we want to do with words and our children.  Let them soak up or marinade in words.  I promise not only will it  pay off on test day, your kids will have a vast vocabulary!

Crocheting and Kids

I learned to crochet last week.  Well, I began learning how to crochet.  My sister crochets beautiful things - scarves, afghans, hats all sorts of things.  My mother in law crochets too.  She has entered some of her things in the State Fair.  Both of them have told me how fun and relatively easy it is to learn.  For thirty five years I have told my mother in law the issue is I am left handed and she is right handed therefore making it very hard for me to learn.   It wasn't that I didn't want to, I envisioned myself many times sitting, watching television and my fingers nimbly working the yarn and the hook. It was that I knew it was going to be hard.  My sister called one day and told me she had bought a book on beginning crocheting that had left handed instructions.  YAY!  She would teach me during our week in Estes Park.  I really was excited and just knew that by the end of the week I would be turning out a beautiful afghan.  My three children would fight over who got mom's first afghan!

The lesson began - I was ready.  Yarn in one hand, hook in the other.  The first thing my sister noticed was that I wasn't relaxed.  My fingers were too tight and up close to the end of the hook. Apparently that was not good.  My project was a coaster.  According to the directions I would be able to whip one out in about an hour.  My sister was very patient.  She would lovingly say, Well, let me see what you have done.  She repeated that phrase over and over and over and over again.  She, being a retired educator, was extremely supportive and kept telling me it looked great. (It really didn't.)

After 7 hours and all I had accomplished was the first row or foundation, my dreams of my children arguing over who would get my first afghan were dashed.  I must have ripped that first row out a hundred times.  Either the loops were too tight or too lose or there was what looked like a growth coming out of the side.  She would say, leave it, it's ok.  But I knew it wasn't.  I was determined so the next crocheting time came and I was at it again.  Deciding maybe it was the cotton yarn, I switched yarns and it did seem much easier.  I made my second coaster in about an hour compared to the 36 hours for the first!

Ever more determined I started on my third coaster.  Could I possibly have a set of 4 before I left to go home?  I was starting to get excited.  I really had learned to crochet!   All along my sister would periodically ask, What do your instructions say?  I had it down, I stopped following along.  My third coaster was the best so far until it was time to finish the edges.  I had forgotten to look at my instructions so instead I snipped the yarn.  I realized quickly I still needed that yarn to do the slip stitch around the edges. I won't repeat what I said.  Always the educator my sister said, Really, it's okay.  We can just tie this together and you are set.  I told her I would do that later and that I was going to do my fourth coaster so I would have all four.

Here's the deal.  It was really, really hard.  I would sneak a peek at my sister crocheting and her fingers were just as relaxed as could be.  She could even visit while she worked!  I wanted to quit, several times.  I thought, I could pay  YOU to make my dumb coasters!  But I didn't.  I kept at it.  I posted my progress on Face Book and loving friends encouraged me, even though I know in their minds they were thinking Oh my gosh!  

I do not recommend you teach your child how to crochet.  Although they might be better than I am. But it reminded me of how hard it is for young children to learn new things.  I learned because my sister provided a scaffold for me.  She walked me through it, she modeled it for me.  She did a little and said, Now, you try it, all the while watching.  She kept encouraging me over and over again.

I think we do a disservice to children when we don't provide that scaffold.  When we don't encourage them all along the way.  When we don't do a little and say, Now you try it.  I think we do an even bigger disservice when we think they will learn something and be great the very first time, not giving them time to practice their craft.  It's a disservice to not realize how hard learning is, regardless of the content.

So....when you teach your child something or they come home from school discouraged about not being able to learn something, remember learning is very, very hard!  Remind them of that too!

The geranium on the windowsill just died...

This is one of my favorite poems by Albert Cullum.  I think sadly it sums up a lot of classrooms, including preschools and day cares.

If you live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area  you are probably tired of the snow, ice, dreary, cold weather. I hate to complain too much when I see what Boston keeps getting.  We had two snow days last week.  Then Friday, it snowed while everyone was at school, preschool and work.  As I watched all the schools and day cares post they were in session, I hoped that the teachers and care providers would throw schedules to the wind and let the children go out and experience the snow.

Now before my teacher friends remind me that there is a high stakes test lurking around the corner and everyone has standards and common core and blah, blah, blah, I have been on enough campuses and have been in education long enough to know that there are days when time is wasted...for whatever reason or no good reason.

There are great teachable moments that happen and as teachers and care providers we need to be aware of them, be alert to them and respond to them.  A few minutes to go out and touch the snow is not going to harm any child educationally.  It may do a lot of good, it may allow for some great oral language, it might even build a positive memory.  If 5-10 minutes of going outside to experience snow destroys a program then the program has other problems.

Parents, check out your child's daycare and school  How do they respond to those spontaneous things that happen?  When it snows where are they? Inside or outside?

As a parent did you take your kids out on the stay home days to play and experience the snow?

Obviously school and work are very important and I do not subscribe to people 'skipping' out  just because.  But life is short and there are times to build memories.  In 1999, the Texas Rangers were playing Seattle during the day.  My son was in 6th grade at the  time.   Ken Griffey Jr. was his favorite player and played for Seattle.  What could be better than his favorite team playing his favorite individual player.  It was the last game of the season, it was the last game of the millennium  it was just too important a game to miss, at least to a 6th grader.  We struggled with what to do.  My husband was in favor and I was not.  I was a teacher, how could I condone missing school for a game?  My husband won and came up with a 'dentists' excuse.  So now, not only was he missing school we were lying about it!  Half way through the day I felt so guilty that I called the school and confessed where they really were.  After some fun, at my expense, the principal told me she was glad we had done that.  Blake would remember that far longer than anything taught that day.  She also said that if missing one day was going to set him behind we had bigger issues.   Her comments have stayed with me!  Guess what, he still talks about the day he missed school to go see the Texas Rangers play Ken Griffey Jr.  I don't recall him talking about a regular day at school the same way.

I know attendance is very important.  Kids needs to be in school, kids need to be in preschool or Mother's Day Out or where ever you have your children.  But there are things that happen in life that we need to seize and enjoy.  Perfect attendance doesn't really build memories.

So when the geranium dies, please don't just go on.