Suggestions to Keep in Mind When Teaching Lessons and Activities

To keep lessons easy to use, we’ve streamlined the content by removing embedded best-practice discussions so you can move straight into instruction. Our recommended best practices are listed below and can be used as a guide across all lessons.

Behavior, Self-Regulation and Giving Children Responsibility

Children are not always ready to listen and learn and for parents who are homeschooling/teaching children at home or supplementing school-based education, a child’s behavior can become an issue when teaching any sort of lesson. It is important to think deeply about what approach has the most impact on a child’s learning. You know your child more than anyone else. Practicing the suggestions for social emotional learning, outlined in our Parent Toolkit will support you through some of the tough times. As a child learns to self-regulate and gain self-awareness, they begin to grow and see interactions with others and themselves in a more mature way.This helps interactions, and that helps teaching and learning.

Using Books as Lesson and Activity Anchors

Many of our lessons suggest books to share or to teach from. Feel free to substitute books you have on hand or consider checking out books from your local library. We also have a blog that lists children’s books that all families could benefit from having in the home. I imagine that there are many classic books that you remember from your own childhood! It is very special to share those with your children.

Assessing Learning

Assessments should look different in each age group. For example, you might give an 8-year-old an opportunity to write in their journal or to write a first draft of a story that you will revise and edit together. However, you would not do the same for a 4–5-year-old since, with most children, it would not be age appropriate. Assessing anecdotally is a very important and supportive practice.There is so much to learn from observing a child while doing their homework or other academic tasks.

Materials

Oftentimes you will find that children enjoy working with basic materials that can easily be found around the house. Many items that could be considered recyclables, plastic containers, cardboard boxes small and large, as well as caps of all sizes can be used by children to make their own creations. Don’t overthink this. You do not need to spend hundreds of dollars to provide children with materials to use during activities. A list follows in the Looks Like section below.

Most behavior issues can be taken care of with respect, knowing the child personally, and giving them time to think about troublesome behavior. Pause. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Then have a conversation with your child. There is usually some underlying reason why they are not cooperating. Remember that you want to work together. You also need to realize that nudging them to complete a task is very important to their learning, accountability, and resilience, as well as many other lifelong skills that will always be needed. I used to tell my teacher prep students: "Don't fight with a young child!" It just frustrates you and gets you nowhere. Take deep breaths, talk it out, or try to stay quiet for a while and then move forward with the lesson.

Read to your child every day. Research shows that a child should hear at least 1,000 readings before kindergarten age. Quick math, reading every day between birth and age 5 equals 1,825 readings and that's only one book a day! Remember, the suggestion is 1,000 readings, not 1,000 different books.

We embed books in our lessons for various reasons:

Reading to the child for pleasure and enjoyment.

Teaching with non-fiction books that cover science, social studies, and even math, they're fun to read, have great photos, and teach academic information in an interesting way that children love.

Shared reading where you and your child read together, talking and asking questions to build comprehension.

Teaching your child to read with appropriate texts and strategies. Please read our Guided Practices on the very important task of teaching reading.

Assessing learning and growth

Discoverers: You'll see that we have general statements about assessing learning in this age group. With very young children, we suggest anecdotal assessments for most lessons. Keep a journal of observations and date each page. When you see your child's first attempt to write their name, color in the lines, or clean up their learning space write in your journal. Note patterns in their learning, keen interests, and when extra support is needed. Take a few minutes at the end of the day to write a review. No grading necessary!

Young and Primary Learners: Assessing at these ages can be different, especially if you're homeschooling and required to keep track of grades for reporting purposes. I suggest splitting assessments into a test at the end of units and anecdotal reviews of retained knowledge. Reading and math tend to be more data-driven, review the suggested assessments that we include in those lessons. Science, Social Studies, and Writing are easier to record with anecdotal notes.

Materials and Supplies That We Think You Should Have on Hand

My suggestions below come from my 35 years of teaching experience in grade school and university. Know that organization supports learning and allows you to use every minute wisely.

Books, books, books: Reading opens a whole wide world for children. I cannot express enough the importance of having a child's library. Use them to create spur of the moment activities that teach children amazing lessons!

Baskets/crates/easy-to-access storage: Organize various items for easy access. Containers are great for crayons, markers, pencils, etc. Always have a tape dispenser, stapler, staples, paper clips, and push pins on hand.

Calendar: Young children can use calendars for weather reporting, counting, patterns, days of the week, seasons, and more.Helps with organization.

Journals: Keep a journal for each child in each content area, math, science, social studies, reading, and writing. This is an important and easy way to track progress and share with your child. Please refer to our Guided Practices about journaling. Some people use a date stamp to keep track of when a lesson was recorded in the journal.

Whiteboard and Chart Tablets: These help immensely with teaching, use them to solve math problems, outline lessons and model reading and writing.

List of some key supplies to have on hand and restock when necessary

Manila and multicolor construction paper, 81/2” x 11” and 12” x 18”

Printer paper/PrinterWriting JournalsLaminator and sheets

Butcher block paperLined paperBaskets for Storage

Graph paper, chart tabletsWhiteboards(small) and markers

Number cards3-hole puncher/3-ring binders for each child

Blank calendarsClipboards

CrayonsShaving cream (to teach letter writing)

MarkersSentence strips/laminated

Pencils – regular and coloredPencil sharpener, Timer, Globe, Microscope, Ruler

Alphabet cardsManila folders

Pipe cleanersCoffee filtersand Paper plates

Play doughPuzzles – various shapes and sizes

Popsicle sticksAdditional craft materials that you would like

Play money and DiceWorld Map

Lowering your voice, instead or raising it, makes the child relax and calmer.I often did this with a roomful of students, and it worked every time. It catches them off guard and they relax.Debating with a child usually ends up badly. Extend 2-3 choices of outcomes that you already want to see in play. For example, do you want to read this book, or that one? You already know which works for you, the child thinks that they were given the opportunity to choose.

Reading to and with children is an absolute joy. As you know, children love hearing the same book repeatedly. Bedtime is a great time to read; it's calming and helps children wind down. It does help to be expressive when reading to a child. Everyone does this differently and you shouldn’t feel that you need to be doing a voiceover in a movie!! Allow yourself to freely express what you’re reading, which of course sounds differently with the sort of book that you are sharing.

When you are reviewing your child’s work for a formal assessment or for the evening’s homework you obviously want to see that they’ve completed the work successfully.However, oftentimes this isn’t the case. This isn’t a time to have a disagreement escalate.If work isn’t completed correctly, observe, and ask questions to find out what wasn’t understood. If work is simply not completed at all a conversation should take place so that the child can verbalize their struggle.

Sometimes we fear that our children are not understanding concepts or struggling in their learning. This can be an unsettling moment as a parent.However, discussing this in a calm, curious manner will help you and the child.

Lastly, when choosing materials for projects and activities allow the child to have a say in the choice. Making a school project for an assignment? Give advice, however let them take the lead at times. This allows you to observe their interests and creative style.

Teaching responsibility is important. Have your child help clean up after every lesson, teach them where items are stored, have them tidy up the area, throw trash away, and restore everything back to how it was before the work took place. Feeling that they are contributing and that you trust that they can handle the responsibility helps with behavior. The child begins to feel capable and reliable and that is great for you and them!

Learning how to problem solve, to collaborate and to think critically are just a few skills under the future-ready umbrella that are being discussed from preschools to top businesses. Your interaction with your child allows you, the adult, to model for them every day. Resiliency when a project doesn’t turn out how they wanted it to or when they need to pivot and work on a different plan is an important character trait that will serve them well throughout their lives.

It isn’t that we want to treat a 5 year old like an adult, not at all, we want to model these traits and allow them developmentally appropriate time to build them in their early years so that they become standard skills in their everyday lives.