Schooling at Home? Here's a crash course.

There are many reasons you may need to temporarily school your children at home. You may have an extended emergency situation, due to natural disaster or community quarantine.  Sometimes schools are able to assist with materials and assignments, but what do you do if you're on your own?

You don't have to choose between letting your child play video games all day and fighting to make them do worksheets.  Learning can be fun!

Seasoned homeschoolers offer this advice:

1. DO NOT try to recreate the school atmosphere at home.  There is no need for a designated school room, a student desk, and certainly no need for endless seatwork.

2. DO NOT think your child needs to put in as many hours for home school as he would in a regular classroom.  Teaching a single child (or even three) takes far less time than it does to meet the individual needs of twenty or thirty children.

3. Enjoy the freedom to make your own schedule, and meet the needs of your own family.  Not every subject needs to taught 5 days a week, and many homeschoolers thrive on a 4-day schedule.  Unstructured "down time" is essential to children developing their own interests, creativity, and initiative.

You may have multiple children to work with, at different levels  That can be challenging, but doable.  The trick is to plan ahead so that one child's high-parent-involvement activity does not coincide with another's.  In other words, try to schedule your students' work so that one is doing something independently while you are working one-on-one with another.  It is often helpful to work with the neediest child first, and then get her started with something she can do independently before working with the next one.  Some group things, like a parent reading to the children, or making a batch of cookies, can be done all together.  Very little ones can play nearby in a secure and supervised area.

A variety of activities is recommended, in short segments. 

A planning template

Here is a typical planning template, and a sample filled out.  The sample is for an imaginary Mom who has a 2nd grade son and a preK daughter, but the principle of staggering the schedule is the same for older kids and multiple children, too.

The main thing is to plan ahead.  But "best laid plans" may often go awry, so keep a sense of humor and don't worry if only a fraction of your plans are accomplished.  The important thing is that you are together and interacting with each other.  Learning will happen!

A sample plan, filled out.  Color coding
makes it easy to see who does what.

If you don't already have a packet of materials from your child's school, there are still plenty of activities that can keep brains going. Here are a few home- and classroom-tested ideas to get you started, that require little or no advance preparation.

Language Arts

• Reading  If there are books at home, students can read aloud to adults, siblings or pets.  They can record themselves reading stories.  To help them process what they are reading, it may be helpful to ask questions about what the characters might be feeling, or what they might do next.  Older students can read and follow recipes or directions for crafts and other projects.  No access to a library?  Try online sources like these.
• Writing  Students can write stories, comic strips, or diaries.  They can start a blog.  They can write a letter to Grandma, directions for an activity, or ideas for an upcoming vacation.  They can copy poems and illustrate them.  They can write a play and act it out live, with puppets or with toys.  You might want to video the performance for later enjoyment.  Enchantedlearning.com has a wealth of reading and writing resources as well.
• Spelling/handwriting Have a family spelling bee; play a rhyming game; practice writing letters/words with fingers in a pan of baking soda, sand or flour, with fingerpaint, or in shaving cream smeared on a table top; form letters with play dough; write words outside with sidewalk chalk; spell words with magnetic letters on a cookie sheet.
• Literature  Reading picture books, short stories, poetry, and even classic children's novels aloud to your children can increase their vocabulary and attention span.  Tired of your old books?  Try some old classics like Anne of Green Gables from free ebook sites.   Listening to audiobooks is something the whole family can enjoy.  Librivox is a free resource for audiobooks that will play on your phone or laptop.

Math

• Number sense/Arithmetic  Many board games involve counting as the students move their markers around the board.  That counts as math for the younger set.
  
  Does your child need to work on addition or multiplication facts? Play a card game together: using a normal deck of cards, discard the face cards and deal out 5 number cards per player.  Choose a target number, such as "12," and play a Go-Fish style game where you form sets of cards that add up to the target number. Player with most sets of 12 when you run out of cards wins. Older students can make up more elaborate sets, using multiple operations, such as with cards 5, 8, and Ace: 5+8-1 = 12.
  
  If you have a foam number puzzle, let your little ones use the numbers and some washable paint to stamp each number, 0-10 or 0-20 (or further), onto a separate piece of paper and place them in order to make a giant number line.  Make a game out of it by having them roll dice or spin a spinner to add or subtract numbers, facing the higher end of the number line as they walk forward to "add" and backward to "subtract.".  Or make a smaller number line for Lego people or other small toys to "walk" back and forth on.
  
  Students can understand and practice place value by gluing dry beans onto popsicle sticks or strips of cardboard.  Have them make count out ten beans for each stick.  If you have enough beans, make 20-50 sticks so you can assemble some 100-bean squares: glue ten sticks, with ten beans per stick, onto a square of cardboard.  Then use the squares, sticks and beans to model 3-digit numbers: for example, show your child how to write "146" to represent one hundred-bean square, plus 4 ten-bean sticks, plus six loose beans.  Try different combinations of squares, sticks and beans.  Then see if she can make the correct model when you write the three digit number.  (To model addition or subtraction with regrouping, you simply build the given numbers and substitute ten sticks for a hundred-bean square, or vice versa, as needed.)
  
  Have students go with you to the grocery store and keep track of what is being spent.  At home, they can use a store circular or catalog to plan a shopping list within a given budget.  Let students follow a recipe to bake cookies from scratch.  Older students can test their understanding of fractions by doubling or halving a recipe.
  
  Measuring anything can be fun, too.  Have the kids guess how many units inches/feet/meters/centimeters, pounds/ounces/kilos/grams, quarts/cups/ounces/liters/mililiters (or whatever) something will measure, and then measure it. All the toys, or everything in the kitchen, or Dad's shoes. Or make the unit something silly, like the length of a coathanger or a doll's shoe.  How many doll-shoes long is your child's shoe?
  
  A clothes hanger, ruler or dowel, some wire or string, tape and paper cups could also become a balance scale.  You can find multiple YouTube tutorials for making one out of whatever you have.  How many paper clips will equal the mass of a grape?
• Geometry  Students of all ages can play with tangrams, making pictures out of different shapes.  Challenge older students to redesign a room in the house by measuring and drawing redesign a scale floorplan on graph paper and rearranging scaled cutouts of the furniture.
• Pre-algebra  Older students can make a number line using negative and positive integers, -10 to 10, and play a game as described above. For negative numbers, players must face the opposite direction, because positive and negatives are opposites.  So, if a player is on 5 and must subtract negative three, he first turns to face the negative (opposite) side of the number line, and then walks three steps backward to subtract, ending at positive 8.
  
  Use dry beans and plastic Easter eggs to help your child model and solve equations with variables.  For example, the equation 2x + 4 = 10, uses 20 beans and 2 eggs.  Each egg hides 3 beans.  Divide a piece of paper in half. On one half of the paper, place the two eggs-with-beans and four loose beans; on the other half, the remaining ten loose beans.  Challenge your student to figure out how many beans are in each egg, if each egg contains the same number of beans, and both sides of the paper have equal beans.  Show him how it can be proven by eliminating four loose beans on each side, and dividing the remaining 6 loose beans into two groups (of three beans) to match the two mystery eggs.  You can even read the equation, "Two 'eggs' plus four equals ten."  (The solution, then, is 'eggs' = three.) Make a game of it, having your student make up and model an equation, which you have to solve, and then switch.  

Science is all about observation and investigation.  Develop your child'd curiosity by using every day things as a starting point.

• Biology  Have students go outside and look for signs of spring.  They can record the daily changes in plants, observing the budding of leaves on a tree branch, or flowers blooming, and drawing what they see each day.  A dry, uncooked popcorn kernel, pinto or lima bean can be sprouted in a jar and measured each day.  Students can research plant growth and development in books or online.
  
  Do you know the parts of a flower, and how fruit is formed? Have your child study a flower from your yard and draw its parts.  Use books or online resources like this one to label the parts.
  
  Got eggs?  Have students investigate how eggs form in a birds body. Google "How does a chicken make an egg?" for several fascinating resources. Older students might learn how a fertile egg differs from an infertile egg, and how a chick develops in a fertile egg.
• Chemistry  Boil a purple cabbage.  The resulting colored water will change color in the presence of starch!  Drop it on bread, potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, cheese, cookies, meat-- which foods indicate starch?  Have students predict and test other foods.
  
  For older students: What happens when baking soda is mixed with vinegar?  Why?  What about lemon juice? Orange juice?  Buttermilk?  How is baking soda different from baking powder?  Why?  What is the purpose of baking soda or baking powder in a cookie or cake?  Why is baking soda + cream of tartar a substitute for baking powder?  Find a cookie recipe, such as peanut butter cookies, that uses baking soda.  What is the acid in the recipe that reacts with the baking soda?  Bake the cookies. Eat them.
• Physics  What makes objects float or sink?  Fill a sink or tub with water and challenge your children to predict, and then test, which of their (waterproof) toys will sink or float.  Can they make a paper boat that will float?  Can they take two identically-sized pieces of aluminum foil, and by changing their shape, make one sink and one float?  Try various designs of aluminum foil boats-- which shapes will hold the most pennies before sinking?  Why?
  
  Got Match Box cars or Hot Wheels?  How does the height of the car when it is released affect how far it travels down the track?
• Astronomy  Watch a sunrise and a sunset.  Why are they on opposite sides?  Chart the phases of the moon.  Stay up late and look at the night sky.  Use binoculars or a telescope.  Download a star chart app.  What constellations can you identify?  How do you tell a planet from a star?  What is the difference?  Which is closer?
• Geology  Start a rock collection.  How are the rocks different? What kinds are they? How did they form? What minerals can you identify in the rocks? Look at local land forms-- identify any lakes, mountains, streams, plateaus, plains.  For older students: What effects do the land features have on life in the area (water availability, mineral and other natural resources, what plants can grow, weather patterns). How does this affect people who might live in the area now, or how they lived in the past?

Social Studies

• Cultures  What traditions are important to your family?  Do you always have a particular dessert at birthdays, for example, or sing a particular song?  Investigate your family history.  From what places did your ancestors come?  What were some of the foods they might have eaten, languages they spoke, traditions they observed?  Do you continue any of these?  What are some of the cultures represented by the ancestors of other friends and family members?  When reading a book, watching a movie, even celebrating a holiday, students can learn about different ways people live and how traditions can be important to a larger group of people.
• History  If students have been reading anything (fiction or non-fiction) that has a specific time period setting, be it Little House, The Titanic or The Red Badge of Courage, they can investigate how people lived in that time period, what they ate, what they wore, how they got around.  They can make a time line to illustrate what was happening before, after, and during the events they are reading about.  Check out the link below for duckster.com for some great information and activities.
• Geography  If you have a globe or world map, children can use it to find the places they read about or  hear about on the news.  If you have both a globe and a map, they can compare the relative sizes of the countries.  See if they can explain which representation is more accurate. Using a globe or map, discuss how nearness to water, mountains, and the equator might affect weather patterns and/or lifestyles of the people who live in a certain place.
  
  Have students make a map of their neighborhood from memory, and compare it to the same area as shown on Google Maps.
  
  Older students can research and plan an imaginary trip to a place they would like to visit. (For more of a challenge, give them an imaginary budget!)  Here is a free website with fun interactive geography games.

Art

• Painting/drawing  Finger paint, watercolor, crayons, pastels, pencils, markers-- whatever they have-- let them create! There are drawing tutorial sites for kids here. Older students can investigate how to use perspective, shading, texture, proportion, and other techniques with YouTube channels such as Circle Line Art School.
• Sculpture  Play dough (homemade or store bought), modeling clay, Sculpey clay, play sand, cookie dough, mud, snow-- there are many things a child can use to create 3D figures.  Children can also design and build fun things out of boxes, paper, cans, foil, string, wire, tape, cotton balls, whatever is available.  Here is my favorite free-to-print papercraft site.  Mobiles and origami, sock dolls, puppets, and homemade paper dolls are other things to try.
• Art History Museums and libraries are the obvious places to look to investigate artists and art forms over the millennia, but online tools can be fun, too.  Students can investigate art from a certain location (Egypt, Texas, Congo, Australia), a time period (Middle Ages, prehistory, 1960's), or a theme (war, motherhood, landscapes, religion, science fiction, cowboys).  They might want to make a scrapbook of images, cover their walls in prints, write a report, make a time line, or record their own video lecture.  You can "visit" many museums through online virtual tours, and some even have pdfs of their collections  to print out and color.

Music

• Singing  Younger kids may enjoy learning folk songs, nursery rhyme songs, or any of the songs here.  And anyone can try their hand at writing new lyrics to a familiar tune-- funny words or serious, words that explain the latest science lesson or help them remember states and capitals.  Then stage a family sing-along challenge!
• Instrumental music  Make skakers out of cans or plastic tubs filled with rice/beans, tambourines out of pie plates or paper plates, drums out of coffee cans or oatmeal containers. Crank up some music and use the homemade instruments to keep the rhythm.  Fill several water glasses with different amounts of water and tap the glasses with a spoon to play a tune. Try out any instruments you have in the house-- toy piano, keyboard, recorder, harmonica, flute. Can you play a tune?  Older kids can try video tutorials such as YouCanPlayIt to learn new songs.
• Music appreciation Learning about musicians and music forms throughout history can be fascinating!  Students can investigate music from a certain location (Italy, New Orleans, Congo, American West), a time period (Middle Ages, 1920's, Renaissance), styles (jazz, blues, rock, Baroque) or a theme (movies, love, cowboys).  They might want to make a scrapbook of composers, cover their walls in sheet music, write a report, make a time line, or record their own music performance.

Physical Education

• Fitness  Ride bikes, jump rope, jump on a trampoline, play hopscotch, climb trees, climb on monkey bars, swing, dance, kick a soccer ball, run, walk, hike, swim.
• Fine/Gross Motor Skills  Shoot hoops, shoot marbles, play jacks, throw bean bags, play ring toss or horseshoes, build a fort.
• Teamwork/Rules  Play freeze tag, tug of war, board games, outdoor games with balls, indoor games with balloons, play tennis or badminton.

Click here for a huge list of free online resources covering prek-high school.
Duckster.com is a free, multi-subject educational site for kids.

Enchantedlearning.com has a boat-load of printables and other online resources.  Some of its site is useful even without a membership, but for full-time elementary homeschoolers, the additional resources are well worth the $20 membership fee.  It is offering free temporary access for students whose schools are closed due to the COVID-19 virus.

Educating your own children, or even helping them keep up with learning after you get home from work, may not be something you went to school for, but after all, you are the expert on your children, and one of their greatest advocates.  You may be more than ready to send them back to their classrooms when school resumes, but in the meantime, you can do this.   And have fun doing it!

DIY Reading Comprehension Game

How do you make reading comprehension practice hands-on, let alone fun?  Here's an easy little game that your students might enjoy.  This activity is appropriate for either fiction or non-fiction on  many levels of reading, in almost any subject area, including literature, history, science and even foreign language/ESOL.  

Objective: the student generates questions from and finds information from a short passage of text.  

Materials:  

• printed copy of text for each student
• colored pencils
• write-on die (or paper cube)
• spinner or dice
• deck of cards
• pawns, buttons, or other small objects
• optional: small sand timer
  
  Preparation: for each group of 2-4 players

1. Print out one copy of the same reading passage for each player.
2. Write these words on each side of the blank die or paper cube: who, what, when, where, why, how.
3. Using 5-10 playing cards for each player, lay down playing cards in a circle or other shape to make a game path.  (So 2 players would have a game path of 10-20 cards, while 4 players would use a game path with 20-40 cards.  Time available, players' attention span, and length of reading passage should determine number of cards used.)

Pre-Play Student Activity:  Making the "Cheat Sheet" or (reference page).  This should be a guided activity at least for the first time it is played.

1. Students choose 6 different colors of pencils, and write a color code key on their paper: write each of the following words with a separate color.  who what when where why how
2. Students read the passage (aloud or silently) through one time, using the "who" color to underline every word or phrase that indicates a "who"-- people's names, occupations, animals, pronouns, etc.
3. Students re-read the passage, using the "what" color to underline every word that indicates an object.
4. Repeat reading/underlining for each of the question words.  Note: use your own judgment to decide how to underline some words; when marking "I took my dog to the pet store," "pet store" could be a what or a where, or both , and " my dog" could be a what ir a who.  You might decide to allow underlining twice, or choose one category for each word/phrase.  

Play:

1. Players lay their game pieces on any card in the path.
2. First player (FP) spins the spinner and moves his pawn in any direction along the indicated number of cards.
3. FP rolls the question word cube.  
4. Player to FP's left, or Second Player (SP), uses the question word indicated to ask first player a question from the text.(SP looks at his "cheat sheet" to find a word/phrase underlined by the appropriate color.  SP asks FP a question that can be answered by that word/phrase.)
   
   Ex: FP rolls "where."  SP looks at cheat sheet, scanning for words underlined in purple (or whatever color he has chosen for "where").  He reads Then she placed him in a manger.  He asks, "Where did Mary place her baby?"
5. If FP answers correctly, she collects the card.  If not, she must return her pawn to START.
6. SP spins, moves pawn, and rolls cube.
7. Player to SP's left asks the question.  Play continues as above.
8. When all cards are gone, players tally up points based on face value of cards.  (Ace =1, Jack/King/Queen=13).  Player with most points wins.

Variations:

1. Have each group create their own game board. They may use a game board template and write directions on the spaces, such as "Move ahead 2 spaces," "Lose a Turn," "Change places with any opponent," "Go back 2 spaces," or even "Do 3 jumping jacks."  Player who gets to the end first is the winner.

2. Whether a player may use the "cheat sheet" to answer the questions is at the discretion of the teacher.  As a general rule, the longer the passage, the more helpful it is to use the reference.  Also, younger students and those who struggle with reading comprehension will benefit most from using the reference.  Without access to the reference sheet, it becomes more of a test of memory.

3. Some groups may benefit from using a sand-glass timer to limit the players' answer time.  (This may encourage students who are prone to timed-test anxiety, when they discover they have plenty of time to skim the text using the color coding.)  For most students, however, it will not be necessary.

When should I push my child?

This "smart" kid was so used to school
being "easy" that it took her 35 years
to love the discipline of learning math.
(But at least she got her teeth fixed.)

Watching our children struggle is hard.  We never like to see them upset, and when they cry over school work or say, "I can't do this! I'm stupid!" it's enough to break your heart.  On the other hand, we want our children to learn persistence and develop resilience.  So how is a parent to know when to step in?

Clearly, there are times when a child is asked to do work that is inappropriate to his ability, or for which he has not had a proper foundation laid.  Sometimes there are learning disabilities involved.  These issues have all been addressed in previous posts.  My topic today concerns the child who is capable, but is handicapped by his own fears or weak study habits.   This is the immature learner-- the typical child-- who needs loving adults to push him to reach his potential.

Sometimes "I hate math" (or whatever) means something else.  Sometimes it means, "I hate the way it makes me feel that I'm not smart anymore." 

It doesn't take long, once children start school, for them to size each other up and start comparing themselves.  They all know early on which of their classmates are good at the things the teachers want them to do; these are the "smart" ones.  Without even thinking about it, children begin to base their identity on being the "smart kid," or the funny one or the fastest runner or even the meanest kid in class.  It is a comfortable feeling to know where you stand and who you are.  But this early self-pigeonholing can cause problems.

When I began teaching, my assignment was middle school Spanish.  It was there that I noticed a phenomenon common to those "smart kids."  I called it crash and burn: many kids who had sailed through elementary school, learning to read and write with ease, were completely undone when they had to learn the vocabulary and grammar of a foreign language.  Meanwhile, some students who had struggled in earlier grades did well in my class.  I saw it happen again when I was teaching middle school math. Why?  Did the "A" kids lose brain cells?  Did the "C" kids catch up?  Was I just bad at teaching smart kids?

I thought about it, and realized I had done the same thing myself when I was in school.  I had sailed through the early grades thinking I was pretty bright, until I started floundering in my high school Algebra 2 class.  Crashed and burned.

So I developed a theory based on my experience and observations: the students who had previously struggled were not taken by surprise when Spanish-- something that was new to them-- took some effort to learn, because they were already accustomed to spending time to memorize and practice new things. The "smart" kids, on the other hand, had assumed "school is easy for me because I am smart."  But now they were unable to simply soak up a new language the same way that they had earlier, almost intuitively, picked up reading and arithmetic.  In short, when they began to struggle, they were shaken to the core, terrified that they were no longer "smart." 

In my generation, schools began to try to prevent this phenomenon by providing "gifted and talented" programs for selected students.  The idea was, challenge them on their own level and they would go far.  The problem was, we weren't really challenged in those programs.  We did some enrichment activities-- learned songs in French, touched a brain and lung, studied the metric system(!), played on the only computer the school had, learned calligraphy, had discussions on "values clarification"-- but it was all very, very easy and fun stuff.  The dangerous idea that being "smart" means school is easy was simply reinforced.

And so the crash and burn phenomenon can happen when a student hits higher level math, or begins to play a musical instrument, or anything that doesn't come easily.  And different students hit this wall at different times, and in different subjects.  But to preserve their "smart" identity, some children may place the blame on the difficult subject.  Then they can go on their merry way, avoiding whatever scared them (as I did with math for 35 years) and may be effectively closing doors of opportunity in their future.

Unfortunately, parents and even teachers can reinforce a child's negative attitude toward a tough subject without even knowing it.  It's one thing to sympathize with a child's frustration, and give them encouragement, but well-meaning adults may make things worse with comments like, "math is hard!"  "I was never very good at spelling, either."  "You'll never use this in the real world, I don't know why they make you learn it."  "Some people are just not good at science."

(Now before you go all "The Animal School" on me, I understand that we all have our gifts.  I am not talking about expecting a turtle to fly, or forcing a child who dreams of being an artist to get an advanced math degree.  But as  Sal Khan (of Khan Academy) insists, the percentage of people who could be literate in both math and language is far closer to 100% than our current educational system produces.)

The good news is, once these kids can get past the wall, they often excel.  Learning that struggling is a positive experience is one of the keys to success-- not just in school, but in life.  "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" is the reason my husband, who has fought dyslexia since he was a child, ended up with a PhD.  He got up and over his wall early.  My wall came later, and it has taken much longer to get over it.

Sometimes "I hate ____" means I hate having to put out an effort to learn something.

As adults, I believe we can and should push our children to truly learn to learn-- not just to do what comes easily to them.  Will they need Trigonometry in their job as a store manager?  Will reading Shakespeare prepare them to be a pharmacist?  Maybe not, but the experience of tackling something difficult, and persisting until they understand it, will build a resilience, work ethic, and confidence in themselves that will serve them throughout their lives.

So when your child says she "hates (insert subject here)," it could be that she is truly not ready for the subject-- or it could be that she simply hasn't developed her learning muscles, and the possibility of failure scares her.  That's when she may need a push.  To determine the difference, consider these PUSH areas:

Persistence: Is she giving up as soon as something gets difficult?  Do the tears start the minute she sees "Write an essay..."? Does she melt down when she doesn't understand a math concept the first time?  Or does she genuinely try to do the work, looking for and correcting her own mistakes, re-working problems, asking for help when she really needs it?  A student who consistently and genuinely tries, but doesn't succeed, may not be ready for the topic at hand.

Unfamiliarity: Does he respond to new material positively, and seem proud when he masters it?  Or does he feel threatened by new concepts, afraid that they will "prove" he's not "smart" enough to understand them?  Sometimes a child will put up a fuss whenever he comes up against a new skill or concept, but calms down after the new wears off and he realizes he can do it after all.  That's a red flag that it's not the topic, but the child's fears, that stand in the way of his learning.

Self-talk: Is she more likely to say, "This is stupid!  I can't do this!" or, "This is tough! But I'll get it."  The child who verbally abuses herself or disparages the work itself is caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy.  As Henry Ford said, "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."  The Little Engine That Could had the right self-talk.

Habit: Does your child often take short-cuts, and find ways of avoiding work?  Is procrastination a recurring problem? Does he do the minimum necessary to get by, careless with his spelling and writing mechanics?  Or does he follow directions, read explanations, and show all the steps in his math work?  Looking back on my math experience, I remember many days when my homework wasn't done.  Hmmm. Correlation?

So how does a parent effectively PUSH a child who really needs it?  Try these ideas:

Persistence: 

1. For long assignments that seem overwhelming, help your child break a task into smaller chunks.  Use a calendar to schedule each stage of a long-term assignments, or a time chart for daily homework and breaks.  
2. Does your child feel overwhelmed at the prospect of doing twenty math problems?  Use a timer to see how many you can get done in fifteen minutes.  Then have him do a chore, or work on another assignment, or practice his music for ten minutes, and then come back and do more math.  Repeat until done. 
3. Choose a quick physical reward for each segment completed (hug, high five, happy dance).
4. Help your child identify resources that he can use when he gets stuck.  Are there notes from class?  Explanations in a textbook?  Information on the teacher's blog?  Many, many topics are explained in videos on You tube, or educational websites like Khan Academy.
5. Remind your child of past successes that took practice and persistence.  Riding a bike, roller skating, swimming, reading-- even if you have to go back as far as his infancy to tell him how he never gave up but kept trying to walk even after he fell down over and over, let him see that he HAS been and can BE successful because of persistence, not because he's "smart."
6. Find an activity your child is motivated to excel in that will require persistence.  Earning Scout badges and rank advancements, martial arts, playing the violin all require practice and effort.  Once a child discovers that hard work pays off in one area, it will be easier to transfer that persistence to another.  (Although the transfer is not necessarily immediate.)
7. Read or watch movies about famous people who overcame obstacles through persistence.  

Unfamiliarity:

1. For difficult new material, help child think through what he already knows about a topic.  If he's learning to add decimal numbers, he probably already knows how to add multi-digit numbers, and he may also know how to use decimals to write dollar amounts.  Help him figure out what he doesn't know about the new topic, and put it into words.  How is adding decimals different?  How do I know where to put the decimal in the answer? 
2. Remind your child that everything is new for everybody the first time they do it.  Discuss how new can sometimes feel scary because of the "unknown."  Share stories of doing something new and being scared at first, and how the feeling went away.
3. Have her teach you to do something that she knows how to do but you don't.  Display a good attitude about your own mistakes. 
4. Have her make a list of things she has never done before but wants to try-- riding a horse, baking a cheesecake, building a rocket.  Then let her do some of the age-appropriate ones, and discuss how things get easier the more you do them.
5. Teach her the concept of the "learning curve" and have her predict how steep the curve will be for each new concept or skill she learns.

Self-talk: 

1. Model positive self-talk!  If you catch yourself saying anything like, "I'm so stupid," correct yourself. Better: "Wow-- I need more practice with that!   I haven't figured this out yet.   I'll be so proud when I get this done!  Whoops-- I made a mistake here.  I might need help with this."
2. Avoid praising your child for being "smart" or "good at ___."  Instead, compliment him on his hard work and persistence: "Your hard work paid off!  Your effort really shows.  I'm impressed with your work! I'm proud of you for sticking with it all the way!"  (This is sometimes a hard one to remember.  I still struggle with not saying "the s word.")
3. Respond to the feeling, not the statement.   Adults who constantly respond to a child's, "I'm stupid!" with, "Oh, sweetie, you're my little genius!" may actually reinforce a child's negative self-talk. The child may feel encouraged to keep saying negative things in order to hear the compliments, or will simply stop listening to the apparently baseless praise.  Instead, let them know you are listening by reflecting their feelings:  "You sound frustrated," or "I hate it when I feel that way."  Later, find something specific and positive to sincerely praise about the child's efforts.

Habit: You may need to choose your battles, especially if he is consistently careless, but as often as possible:
1. Praise careful work, excellence and attention to detail.  Don't look for perfection (careless people may be hidden perfectionists who don't try, because their results can never be as good as they want them to be), but make a point to recognize extra effort, and do so specifically:  not, "That paragraph is great!" but, "You described the dinosaur five different ways!  Nice job!"
2. Require completion of tasks, on time.  Little things like putting their dirty clothes in a hamper instead of on the floor for mom to find, and putting the pieces of a board game back in a box after playing with it, are ways of being courteous to others.   Even small children can do these things.  The same applies to completion of homework.  If your child has an assignment list, you may need to help him go over it each night to be sure his homework is truly done.
3. Emphasize following directions.  If you ask your child to put his clothes away, and he throws them on his bed, he has not followed directions.  Likewise, if a worksheet says "Answer in complete sentences," and he gives 1-2 word answers instead, he has not done the assignment.
4. Reject lazy work.  If the student knows how to use capital letters and periods correctly and still writes sentences without them, make him go back and correct his work.  If he is randomly putting answers down on his math paper, or not bothering to show his work, he needs to redo it correctly.

Watching our children struggle can be heart-wrenching.  But we also know that allowing them-- or worse, enabling them-- to give up, simply to make their present life easier, is never in their best interest.   When we can help our children learn persistence and develop resilience, we are teaching them critical skills they will need to find their own brand of success in their adult lives.  And that's a job we can be proud of.

The importance of immediate feedback

Ever wonder why your old math textbooks had the odd-problem answers in the back of the book?  Or why flash cards can be so helpful?  Or why educational computer games and digital learning are so effective?

A big part of the answer is immediate feedback.  When a child is learning multiplication facts, for example, the use of flash cards or electronic math drills allows him to form a question (What is 5x6?), put forth an answer (um...35?) and verify its correctness (no: 5x6=30) within seconds. The initial uncertainty in the brain actually forms a "hole" to fill or a connection for the brain to attach the information to. With enough repetition, the correct facts are cemented in the child's memory.

A screenshot from the free online math drill at mathsisfun.

Sometimes a learner doesn't recognize what he does and doesn't understand.  In this case, working through a problem and getting immediate feedback is critical to efficient learning.  Case in point, I am currently taking an online math course myself.  The homework assignments in this course are set up so that when an answer is submitted, I am immediately informed as to whether my answer is correct.  If it is, hooray, my procedure was good.  If not, then I have the immediate opportunity to find my error and fix it while the problem is still fresh in my mind.  More than once I have hit "submit," thinking I had worked the problem correctly, only to find I had not.  Other times, I am unsure whether I have done something right, and am pleased to find that I have.  Either way, the immediate feedback allows me to remember the correct procedure much better than the delay of a day or even a week as we used to do in the old days of turning in homework on paper.

Which explains those odd answers in the back of the book: when students are working independently, it does no good for them to do the work if they are doing it wrong.  As I used to tell my classroom students, "Show your work as you do each problem, but then check your answers. If it's wrong, redo it until you get it right!"

So whether your child is practicing math facts or doing homework, make sure he has access to quick feedback.  Maybe this means checking the back of a book, or trade-and-grade the next day in class.  If you are homeschooling, maybe it means giving your child the answer key to check his own work when he is finished each day, or in some cases, sitting beside a new learner to help her catch errors as soon as she makes them.   The sooner the feedback, the faster the learning.

A twist on multiplication flash cards.

I read a short ebook this week by Renee Ellison called Teach Math Faster.  (Quick read, only $0.99 on Amazon Kindle.)  She has some very good hands-on ideas for helping children with math basics.  One of them was a twist on the tried-and-true multiplication flash cards, in which she added a visual representation of each quantity instead of simply writing the numerals.

Why is this helpful?  Because the more often a child can use concrete ideas when learning math, the better he will understand what the numbers are doing. Math educators call this "number sense."  For example, instead of rotely memorizing the words and symbols of
6 x 4 = 24,  the child using Ellison's flash card design sees an array of 24 blocks, arranged in four rows of six blocks each.

This is the front of a
Teach Math Faster flash card.

Now of course, children who are old enough to learn multiplication will have long mastered the concept of number symbols standing for quantities.  However, many children have only a shallow understanding of what multiplication actually means.  They will use "times" as a verb-- "I can times six an three"-- in the same way that my children used to think that verse was a verb meaning "to defeat"-- as in, Godzilla versus ("verses") Megalon.  (They would say, "I'm going to verse those bad guys!")  But when the front of the flash card shows a graphic representation of what  "six times four" means, the concept is reinforced at the same time that the memorization is taking place.

An added dimension of concept reinforcement occurs when a range of multiplication facts is studied-- while "8x7=56" uses the same number of digits as "2x5=10," there is a clear difference between the space occupied by ten squares compared to fifty-six squares.  The child's number sense increases when she sees just how much bigger 56 is than 10.

On the back of the flash card, Mrs. Ellison repeats the array, this time without the numbers, and provides the product:

This is the back of a Teach Math Faster flash card.

So when the child is using this flash card, he is reading the numbers on the front and multiplying them in his head just like a traditional flash card.  He checks for the correct answer on the back, just like a traditional flash card.  But his brain is experiencing something totally new: the abstract symbols are gone, replaced by a picture of what's happening in the problem.

Genius!

Now for the bad news:  as far as I know, this style of flash cards is not commercially available.  Like the other manipulatives in Mrs. Ellison's little book, they have to be home made.  She recommends using graph paper to keep the size of the squares consistent-- otherwise, there is less visual impact in the size difference that I explained above.  So you-- or your child-- write the numbers in the squares and cut the arrays out, then glue them onto index cards.

One suggestion I would make:  if you are using color-coded math manipulatives such as Cuisenaire rods or Math-U-See blocks, match the flash cards to whichever set you're using.  It's as simple as adding lines of the appropriate colors to the edges of the array on the front side of the card, like this:

This array matches Cuisenaire rods, with
forest green for 6 and magenta for 4.
Math-U-See would use purple and yellow.

Cuisenaire rods and Math-U-See blocks
use different colors to signify quantities.

Be sure not to color-code the back side of the card, however, because that would too quickly give away the numbers that the student is supposed to be memorizing.  The array itself already shows the answer if the student counts the blocks, but he still has to work for it. Color-coding the front side makes sense because the number symbols are also written in, so nothing is being given away.

As mentioned in a previous post, adding color provides one more level of connection for the brain.  If your child already associates certain quantities with specific colors, tapping into this association will increase his number sense as he learns his multiplication facts.

Make an abacus: a fun summer math craft!

Other than loose rocks and seeds that prehistoric people used to count with, one of the most ancient math manipulatives is the abacus, or counting frame.  If your

This Chinese abacus predates our written number system.

kids have one, great! But just like growing their own garden can tempt kids to eat their vegetables, making math "toys" can encourage them to see math as something fun and exciting.  So why not have them make one?

There are many ways to make an abacus.  You can find a variety of abacus types and a variety of materials they can be made from.  However it's made, it's a great math manipulative your students can use over and over.

The type of abacus you make depends on what you want to use it for.  A simple 100-bead abacus is a great way to show place value.  The traditional Chinese or Japanese abacuses are a little more abtract.  These ancient counting frames are still base-ten models-- that is, they represent numbers whose digits represent multiples of 10 based on their position in the number-- but they use fewer beads per row because a separate section of each row contains higher-value beads.  Click here for a tutorial on how these traditional abaci (or abacuses) work.

A ten-bead per row, 100 bead abacus.

Math programs such as Right Start routinely use a 100-bead type of abacus to model place value.  This abacus typically has 100 beads, arranged in ten rows of ten beads each, often with five of one color and five of another to make the numbers easy to read.  The abacus is held so that the rows are vertical, and the row on the far right is the ones' place, with the next row to the left being tens, then hundreds, and so on.  When decimals are introduced, a dot can be placed along the frame to redefine the rows as hundredths, tenths, ones, etc.

One of many abacus apps.

Of course, you can find online abacus apps and use those, but it's so much more fun to have a real one you can actually put your hands on! Especially if you made it yourself.

To construct your own abacus, you will need beads, a frame, and rods of some kind to string the beads on. The beads themselves can be plastic pony beads, wooden beads, homemade clay beads,  even paper beads.  The frame can be made of wooden strips, popsicle (craft) sticks, or cardboard.  The beads can be strung onto wire, string, pipe cleaners ("chenille stems"), toothpicks, or bamboo skewers.  Even string can be used.  This clever video shows an abacus made entirely of paper and tape!

Two types of abaci among
 my favorite math "toys."

My favorite, portable, sturdy abacus is made of 50 pony beads, strung 10 at a time onto bamboo skewers, with the skewer ends hot-glued between pairs of popsicle sticks.  But if all you have is Froot Loops, tape, and plastic straws, the cereal can be strung on the straws and taped to a frame cut from the cereal box.   Be creative!   Other options, with more detailed instructions, are linked below.

traditional abacus design 

mini traditional design

base 10 (American) design

Color can add hands-on interaction to assignments

Not every assignment that your child is asked to do will be as "hands-on" as she might need. Some worksheets and study guides tend to be so non-engaging that they end up being more busy-work than instructional aids. However, there are specific modifications you can make to the assignments which can increase her whole-brain involvement without affecting the intent of the assignment (or the grading of it).  One of the easiest modifications is to add extra concept-bridging steps to the assignment through the use of color.

No, I am not talking about coloring pages here.  Handing a child a picture to color rarely engages his brain in any way that reinforces learning.  On the other hand, asking a child to add colors to a diagram, text or drawing in a way that requires analysis of the words or pictures will make a significant impact to his learning.

A net and its solid.

Add color.  Highlighters, markers, crayons, and colored pencils are indispensable when it comes to helping your child sink her brain into a pencil-and-paper assignment.   In a recent math lesson, one of my students was having trouble visualizing the net of a geometric solid.  He couldn't see how the faces of the 3D drawing matched the faces of the net diagram. Ideally, we could have cut out a series of nets, then folded and taped them together to build paper models of the solids-- and we did do one just to make sure he understood the concept-- but that's very time consuming and we had many different solids to figure out.  This was a case where "hands-on" had to be a little more creative, and color-coding became the hands-on bridge from looking at a simple assignment to actually being able to work with it and analyze it.

The net and solid, color-coded.

For this assignment, I had him color-code the faces of the solid figure and the corresponding faces on the net; he was then able to make the connection between the 2D and 3D figures.  Once he could see the way the faces related to each other, where they connected, and the shape of each one, he could more easily match the solids to their nets.






Another use of color can help students understand math processes. For example, some of my students have struggled with long division or multi-digit multiplication, getting lost with all the different numbers that have to interact with each other.  Here we see a number multiplied by 23.  The digits 2 and 3 are color coded to match their products as the number is multiplied out:

In this way, a student can see that 1353 is the complete product of 3 x 451, while 9020 is the complete product of 20 x 451.  Notice the "placeholder zero" is colored an almost invisible gray to reflect the "invisiblitity" of the ten's place zero that makes 23 = 20 + 3.    Division can be analyzed the same way, writing each digit of the quotient in a different color so that the student sees what is happening in the process:

Color coding is equally effective in studying spelling rules.  Students who cannot identify the individual phonograms in a word are stuck with memorizing the unique spelling of every word they encounter, which severely limits their ability to spell. What they need is a way to see the phonograms in a word as they study its spelling. While my favorite hands-on spelling instruction is done by manipulating movable letter tiles, or physically cutting up words into syllables and letter combinations, this is not always practical. Instead, students can be shown how to color code the various phonograms in their spelling words.

Color-coded phonograms.

In this assignment, for example, a student might have been told to simply copy his spelling list.  That's easily done without involving much of the brain, even if he has to "copy each word five times each." Instead, modifying the assignment to add in some color-coding will require the student to analyze and interact with the words in a more hands-on way, which can increase the likelihood of actually learning to spell the words.



For the example above, the student may the words himself, changing the color of his pencil for each phonogram.  He could also write them in regular pencil and then underline the letters in different colors.  Highlighting or using colored pencils to circle the phonograms in a pre-printed list could achieve the same purpose for students who have diffficulty with writing.

The directions for the above example could go something like this:
1. Separate each word into syllables.*
2. Write single-letter vowel sounds in black, single-letter consonant sounds in blue.
3. Write double letter (same letter) consonant sounds in red, two-letter consonant sounds in green, two-letter vowel sounds in purple.
4. Underlined silent e..
5. If a separate, single-letter consonant or vowel sound follows another one, give it a different color (e.g., the "c" in escape, or the "a" in creation).

(*Note: I was taught that syllables are officially divided in the middle of double consonants: bel-low.  However, for the sake of identifying phonograms, the sound of a double letter such as /l/ occurs once in the word, so we can treat "ll"  as a single phonogram spelled with two letters, just like ph or sh, which are never separated.)

Color-coded roots, suffixes and prefix.

Besides learning the spelling of words, adding color can help children learn the meaning of words.  Vocabulary study often emphasizes prefixes, suffixes, and roots from Greek or Latin.  Color-coding can be very helpful for this as well.  Simply highlighting prefixes in one color, and suffixes in another, can help a student focus on the base words and analyze the meanings of words.  Or in a list of words that share certain roots, highlighting each root in its own color can call attention to the shared meaning of the words.

This concept can be easily extended to have students color-code the roots to match the corresponding key words in their definitions:

As you can imagine, analyzing words this way gets the hands, eyes, and brain involved in a manner that simply copying the words over and over cannot do. Similarly, color can be used to analyze text.  People have used highlighting to mark important information for years.  Why not use a variety of highlighting colors more intentionally?  If your child's assignment involves reading for information, he may use color to match information in the text to individual questions, either before he writes his answers, or afterwards.  While it may seem redundant to mark up a text in this way, the process actually increases reading comprehension by engaging the brain in a more concrete way than simply writing an answer.  Some schools teach this technique of "justifying" a response, requiring students to mark the information in the text that supports their answer:

This worksheet becomes more effective when the student

 uses color to match textual information to the questions.

Adding the targeted use of color to an assignment is limited only by the imagination.  A science diagram can be color coded to indicate the function of various structures. A history article might have facts highlighted that correspond to opposing political views. Whatever the student is asked to learn, color can help add hands-on interaction to even the most black-and-white of worksheets.