If you have met me, you have probably
heard me banging on about routine and repetition! I really believe that at this
early age, everything keeps coming back to routine and repetition. Anything you
want your child to achieve must be integrated into their daily routine and done
again and again until they have perfected the skill. If you do it once a day
you can achieve it infinitely faster than once a week, not only because of the
extra repetitions, but because there is such a little amount of time between
practices for them to forget.
For example, I can see that if I play a
little letter game with Jake (my little one) it will take about a month and a
half for him to really know them. In contrast, I have seen many children who
play a little letter game once a week and realistically they are lucky if they
have it mastered in a year. This is not only because to get in those 45
practice sessions it takes 45 weeks, but because they spend so much time
relearning what they have forgotten over the week long interval.
Do you want your child to learn things
swiftly and with ease? Do you want them to have their confidence boosted by
seeing rapid development and progress? Then, basically all you need to do is
stick to practicing whatever it is they are learning for a few minutes every
day! It doesn't really seem to matter if you just do a tiny bit every
day, whether it is just playing a little letter game for two or three minutes,
counting to ten a few times over the course of the day or riding a scooter up
and down the path for a few minutes. Whatever it is, if you stick to it you
will see results.
Luckily, as you may have noticed,
children love repetition, whether it is that picture book they want to
read over and over or that repetitive song like ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ that
they never get bored of singing. They thrive on repetition, on the predictable,
because it makes them feel secure and successful, because they know what is
going to happen. Children also seem to begin to accept that whatever it is that
they are doing every day, is part of everyday life. They don’t question it,
they just get on and do it. That is what I find with things like writing, the
children who do a bit of writing at home every day are keen, have no fear and
will just sit down and get on with it. Children who don’t practice every day
are much more likely to see it as something to be worried about, have
insecurities, which I guess are somewhat founded, because without that constant
repetition, they don’t see progress anywhere near to that of a child who is
having a little practice every day.
At the moment, one of the things we are
focussing on doing a little of every day is recognise the numbers. One of the
resources that I think is good for this is a numbers puzzle, like in the photos
below. They are very cheap, easy to find in toy stores or on ebay for around
$10 (search wooden number puzzle). We play a game where I/he takes them out and
I tell him what they are. Then when they are on the table I ask him to find me
a certain number, so he can find it and the put it into the puzzle. He is very
good at finding the numbers, but still can't name them all, which is typical.
You need to play finding games a lot, until your child is so confident and then
they will be able to tell you the names of the numbers.
So, Jake is not the easiest, most placid
of children! The above game we play while he is having a snack or eating a
meal, because the game keeps him busy enough to sit down and eat, and
the food keeps him in one place so he is paying attention to the activity! He
can sit down and work when he is interested and absorbed by an activity, but
loves to be on the go and like a lot of boys/ children in general, learns
better when he is on the move. I had some leather offcuts given to me and I
have cut them up and written numbers on them. I pop the squares on the floor
and tell Jake to find a number. He finds it and jumps on it, then we jump up
and down the amount of times that the square specifies. Good counting practice
while we are at it and he loves it.
Because 6 and 9 are easily muddled by
the children a fun game is holding up the six and saying 'silly, silly six,
standing on his head with his feet in the air', then lie down with your little
one and put your feet in the air, mimicking the six shape. They think it is
great fun, giggling away. Then hold up nine and say 'sensible number nine,
standing up straight with his head at the top and feet on the floor' and have
them stand up being a nine.
Jake loves cars and driving little ones
around so we use them to practice enumerating. We put the numbers out on the
mat, I ask him to find number one, then we set it out and go and get one car
from the shelf and so on... Use whatever your child likes and hopefully it will
keep them involved and interested!
I know too much screen time isn't good
and Jake won't sit still for long to watch a tv show properly anyway, but if he is
eating or in the car he is absorbed by it and I think, why not? A very
repetitive, but I think potentially useful tv show for children is the
preschool prep series. They all seem to be on youtube nowadays or you can buy
the dvd/ download them. This is the youtube link for the numbers show. https://www.youtube.com/
Jake is great at counting to ten now, if
you want to practice rote counting, integrate it into everyday life. Count
every stair as you climb them, every block as you build a tower, every step as
you cross the road.
Enjoy, I am counting on you to make numbers
a tonne of fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment