How Parents Can Help
How Parents Can Help!
Many things that you do at home on a daily basis will help your children the most. The activities described below benefit all children.
- Set aside a special reading time. Tell your child you look forward to and enjoy your reading time together. Children who are read to ------READ.
- Listen to your child. Oral language experience is also a foundation for literacy.
- Talk to your child.
- Make time to play with your child.
- Solve problems with your child.
- Have your child count everything and anything.
- Write stories out as your child dictates them. Children love to see their ideas on print.
- Praise your child whenever possible.
- Talk with your child about school and everyday events.
- Supervise homework. Give your child a quiet place to work, and check that assignments are completed.
- Encourage exercise and good nutrition.
- Encourage your child to write.
- Broaden your child’s horizons by taking him or her to parks, museums, libraries, zoos, and historical sites. All these places offer fun learning experiences.
- Tell your child education is important, and encourage him or her to do well in school.
- Children do not know intuitively how to behave; kindly but firmly teach your child.
- Help your child get a library card from the public library. Take your child to the library as often as possible.
- Help your child pick out interesting books to read.
- Talk to your child about subjects that interest him or her.
- Give your child his or her own place to keep books.
- Write notes to your child. Leave them to be found in special places----under pillows, in lunches or in favorite books.
- Encourage your child to keep a scrapbook about a subject that interests him or her (example: stamps, dogs, birds, trucks, photos)
- Limit your child’s television watching. Turn the television on for a specific show, and turn it off immediately after the show is over.
- Read and discuss school work with your child.
- Provide materials for creative projects.
- Give your child a calendar to write down special events and mark off each day.
- Help your child make a telephone directory with the names and telephone numbers of his or her friends.
- Ask your child to write or dictate a sentence or two for letters or e-mails your write to faraway relatives.
- Give your child specific duties at home to perform on a regular basis.
- Invite your child to help you prepare dinner.
- Subscribe to a children’s magazine in your child’s name.
- Bring books for your child to read in the car.
- Look up words with your child in the dictionary.
- Encourage your child to show his or her school work to your friends or relatives.
- When traveling read word signs with your child. Discuss what they mean.
- Show your child how to use a yardstick, ruler, or tape measure to measure things around the house.
- Give your child a special place to keep items he or she must regularly take to school.
- Show your child how to tell time.
- HUG your child daily!