Kid Crafting and Learning
Crafting provides a unique opportunity to educate your children in a fun, relaxed, and nurturing environment. By using my theme-based approach, you also have the opportunity to tailor in teaching tools from outside resources. That is what this page is about.
Below you'll find several teaching tools that I've used with my own children. Some were successful, others turned out to be total duds. As you already probably know, each child truly is different. They all learn differently, and achieve learning objectives on different schedules. I made the mistake with my first child of trying to force her into starting her letters and letter sounds (in a very structured manner) in the hopes that she could begin elementary reading before she started kindergarten. It totally backfired... not only was she not picking up the letter sounds or phonics, she started reverting and forgetting which letter was which (something she had known for several months.). When I finally figured out that I was pushing too hard, we went back to just trying to have fun and maybe get in a little learning. That is really when I started trying to incorporate other learning tools into my crafting themes.
Once I made the switch from trying to make them learn to sneaking in some learning, they began to make remarkable progress. My oldest started coming to me to help her with her letters, started telling me what words began with which letters, and began making up silly songs about letters. This may not sound like much, but she was adamantly against learning her letters by the time I wised up and changed my methods. She came a long way in a short time.
My son, on the other hand, seemed to pick things up fairly easily and didn't mind a bit of structure. He knew all his letters on sight by the time he was about 28 months old (2 years and 4 months), began trying to write them (although he didn't have the coordination yet), and also understood counting and some basic addition. I felt like I was definitely on to something and began using all kinds of different learning programs as part of my crafting themes.
As with everything, you will have to experiment and find out what works best with your own child. But below are some of the learning tools and programs that I use with my own kids and incorporate into my theme crafting as much as possible. These are the tools that I have found to be the most useful.
Phonics, Reading, and Letter Recognition
Phonics and phonics programs are a natural fit for many different themes. It's fairly easy to incorporate basic reading skills into most crafting themes. If you're doing letter themes, then you obviously talk about the letter as you are crafting, talk about words that start with that letter, etc. Then you spend 15 minutes or so during the day working on the phonics program of your choice. Below are a few notes on the two phonics programs that I'm familiar with... both are well known and well respected programs, but there are distinct differences that you should be aware of before you even think about buying one.
Hooked on Phonics
- This is the first phonics program that I ever heard of and the first one that I bought for my kids. I bought this program when my oldest was about three years old. At first, we were excited about this program, but we quickly learned that it just didn't work for my three year old. She enjoyed the music and did okay with the flash cards, but they really just didn't hold her attention for long enough to get through the whole 15 minutes required. She was excited about learning to read, but not about the actual learning part.
I've come to believe since then that this program really isn't aimed at children this young. When we originally bought it, they advertised teaching children to read. Now they really seem to advertise improving your child's reading skills. I think this program would be quite useful in helping a child improve their reading, if they already had some of the basic skills like letter recognition, letter sounds, etc., but I think this program is ineffective for a younger child who is just beginning to understand letters and the concept of reading. I would not recommend this program for young children.
Frontline Phonics
- This is the phonics program that I would recommend for a child who is just beginning their journey into reading. This program is clearly aimed at younger children, featuring several different activities to keep children interested. Rather than going through the entire alphabet in order (like the program above), it focuses each lesson on just one letter at a time. The child is taken through just a few of the letters, one lesson at a time, then they learn to blend them into words. They are reading their first book after just nine lessons.
In my own experience, this program is far superior for younger children and emergent/beginner readers because it gets them reading much more quickly than the other program. Once they get hooked on reading and read their first book, they are fired up to continue working on the other letters. I talked above about how I pushed my daughter too hard in the beginning and that I had to fundamentally change how I tried to teach her... I purchased this program shortly after I came to that realization. When I began using this program with her, she became a totally different "student." She quickly grasped the letter sounds and blending and was reading her first book in about ten days. Based on my own experience, I highly recommend Frontline Phonics.
Other Languages
Muzzy - This is the language course for children that you've probably seen advertised on television. We bought the Spanish version for our children a couple of years ago. I used to be fairly fluent in Spanish many years ago and we thought that if we chose Spanish that I could talk to them in Spanish and give them more practice with the language. You may be wondering if my children now speak Spanish... well, no. They like to watch the tapes over and over again and they understand the story pretty well, but they don't speak Spanish beyond a few words.
I honestly don't see how any child could learn any language by simply watching the same tapes over and over again. Even if they could memorize the dialog, phrases, vocabulary, etc. they still wouldn't know the language. I know from my own experience that it takes years of talking to others in that language to actually learn it. I also know that it is easy to forget if you don't use it regularly. In the case of Muzzy, I think that maybe this is a good way to introduce children to the idea of other languages and maybe even "wire" their little minds so that they will be more successful learning other languages later on in life, but this program will not teach a child another language in my opinion, unless you can also speak to them in that language. When you consider the high price of this program, I'm not sure it's worth the money.
Mathematics
Mathematics programs aren't something that we have formally attempted with out kids yet. We play counting games, work on number recognition, do some simple addition and subtraction, but that's it. We play at numbers. I'm not really sure that most kids can start to grasp the idea of mathematics until their are about 4 or 5, but if you are interested in getting your kids in a formal program, I understand that Hooked on Phonics has a very good program.
If we decide to start a formal mathematics program, that is probably the one I will try. I'll let you know how it works out. In the meantime, my kids know exactly how many cookies or pieces of candy they and their siblings get, so they must be learning something!
Music
Piano Is Easy - We haven't started any kind of formal music lessons with the kids yet(we may never do anything formal... who knows?). They say that kids who learn to play music do better in math... But that has nothing to do with why I mention this program. I bought this program for myself a few months ago because I wanted to learn to play the piano. It's a play by number program that gradually teaches you how to play and read music. I really like the program. It comes with a video tape that teaches you how to play chords, etc.
To make a long story short, I was watching the video one day with my son in the room (the two year old) and I had to turn it off to do something else. He threw a fit because he wanted to watch the "piano movie." I didn't even know he was paying any attention to it, but I turned it back on. I left the room to answer the phone and when I returned, he was sitting at the keyboard trying to copy what they were doing on the video. Since that time, he "plays" the piano everyday. It doesn't sound very pretty to me, but he thinks he's playing songs and I encourage him. He can even play with some of the numbers. I don't think the music exposure hurts him one bit. Anyway, I like this program, so I thought I would bring it up.
Links to Other Articles
How To Encourage Early Reading - It's unlikely that your child will begin to learn how to read before the age of three or four, but there are things you can do from birth to encourage early reading...
Is My Child Ready To Read? - If you have a preschool or kindergarten age child, you have probably asked yourself this question...
Frontline Phonics Review - Read why I really like this program and think it is the best reading program available for young children and emergent readers.
Hooked On Phonics Review - Read why I think this program is probably not right for your child if they are just beginning to put the whole reading thing together.
