Free Tips For Your Child's SuccessWritten by Frank W. Thatcher Jr.
Getting free tips for a child's success is something most parents/guardians are interested in. Most want their child's academic growth to improve every school year. Most sincerely care. Unfortunately some don't, but that's a completely different article. For now, I want to focus on improving reading abilities of our children immediately. This summer is flying by and soon our children will be back in classroom with eager teachers and their fellow classmates. My concern as an educator, with over twenty years of invaluable experience, is loss of reading and comprehension skills over summer months simply due to lack of reading. Children need to read in order to keep up their skills. They must read on a consistent basis to not only maintain but to also improve their skills. Just as any skill or talent, if it isn't used, it will slowly diminish. Do we really need our children's reading abilities to begin to waste away as they enjoy summer months? I don't think so. Our society can't afford this to happen either. I frequently compare reading skills to that of a runner's skills. A person that wishes to maintain or improve his or her running ability must run almost on a daily basis. What takes much time and effort to achieve however, can be very quickly lost if that runner takes some time off. Basically, to maintain skills, runner needs to run on a consistent basis. This is exactly what we are looking to achieve with our children and their reading skills. We want them to maintain and even improve their skills. This can be accomplished by reading consistently. Perhaps not every day, but consistently.
| | The Gift of TeachingWritten by Arleen M. Kaptur
Parents are truly first teachers that their children encounter. They are there in those very vital formative initial years of life, when most basic functions and abilities are taught and practiced. Values, behavior, and living skills are in process of forming and child's environment and examples of parents weight so heavily in this very delicate balance of becoming a fully functioning adult. When a child matures and reaches age of attending school, something magical takes place. Interests expand, social skills are just beginning to blossom, and imagination and creativity are being explored and tested. Whether a child attends a home school or a local school (public or private) next vital components in development are being put to "max." Science, math, language, history, and all other subjects that make up a curriculum are vying for attention and abilities of child. From printing their name for first time to solving a complicated math process all add to qualities and essence that will evolve, expand, and let them become a wonderful asset to entire world. No longer is it correct to assume that this boy/girl should only fit in comfortably and capably in goegraphical area he/she calls home, but with advance of computers and other technological achievements, this child is most definitely a citizen of every other continent and country, and in future, possibly of other galaxies and planets.
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