CHAPTER 5. THE MAIN PROGRAM
How do we start? By playing school
Playing school was always a favorite activity at our place and I have found few children who don’t love it particularly with a willing adult participant. Even when it is a child’s full time occupation most five year olds find it a most enthralling occupation.
So introduce the program as playing school together with equal turns of all the activities including being the teacher. Don’t make it serious, though don’t let it get too continually boisterous; you can use your imagination and be a naughty boy occasionally and let the teacher show you what happens at pre-school or day care or school when that occurs.
First session at our place
When my husband John and daughter Lindy sat down to play school, John, all six foot of him, had his turn of teacher first, somewhat tentatively. He then offered Lindy a turn as teacher. Our small daughter who had always called her father “daddy’ hopped up on the chair, completely in control and started off “ Right-e-oh John, sit down and cross your legs!” She then proceeded to give him a perfect writing lesson, (which he needed), obviously copied exactly from her teacher. He was much more efficient when he had his next turn!
Our most frequent trouble was that it was almost impossible to get it finished by anything like bedtime!
words.
Get your equipment ready
Although you may have most of the things suggested for the exercises below, it is of utmost importance to have it at hand when you need it. I cannot stress this too much.
Although the total cost of the equipment needed is not great, you may find getting it together is rather time consuming. I’d love to be able to provide you with a kit.
If you need some motivation, I would also suggest that for your child shopping for or organizing into a “reading kit” a new piece of chalk, bottle of clag or sticky tape, a balloon, and a new exercise book can be an exciting occurrence and is motivating for a less interested child.
By the way, some of the simple things suggested, like clag, plasticine or playdough, a stapler, are much more interesting to a five year old than some 21 century expensive toys.
Record Sheets
In my original study when I presented my research plan to my supervisor, he said “How do you propose to measure whether the participants in the study will in fact do any of the things you suggest? How can you show that the mothers have in fact spent time with their children?”
I then devised a simple record sheet for use against this possibility. It provided space for sticking on stars - a motivational device or straight out reward for cooperation by the child. It also provided a space for checking out how much time was spent and comments on the activities.
You will be glad to know that in fact the mothers did do the activities and spent an average of more than two hours a week on the program in that first study.
Since that time I have worked with many groups of parents with no specific attempt to measure the amount of participation or evaluate the effect of the program. However we all found that the record sheet has value in itself! It was a motivational device for both mother and child!
In fact a couple of times my children have come across old records sheets in the study and have pestered me to use them again, to check out how much time I spent with them, how much I helped them with their work, how much time they spent on reading, homework, music practice, or a multitude of other things.
Finding Time
Finding time
One of the most important elements of the program is that you discipline yourself to actually put aside time to devote specifically to one child. I believe that children have a right to this time from their parents but we are all so busy that we never give our children the time we believe we should. In fact you will probably be horrified if you actually measure this time, how little it is. The record sheet is a simple device to check this out and a reminder when you haven’t kept yourself up to your own expectations.
Your child will keep it for you and keep you up to your promise.
If you don’t use the sheets suggested, use a calendar on the back of your child’s door, with a packet of stars beside it so you can stick something there when he has done some good work, or even a big tick with a red pen. It is the symbol that counts.
Siblings
What if you have more than one small child? I believe it is much better to work with just the one child on this if at all possible. I also understand the real jealousies that develop when you spend more time with one than another. Get your partner to do something else with the other child(ren) at the time you are doing the program.,
Could I say that spending the time closely involved with your child can be of inestimable value to the child and yourself. Many parents, and fathers particularly last century, don’t really know what to talk about with their young children.
This program can give you a framework in which to develop a close relationship.
If you have more than one child you may be able to make it up to an older child by spending time every second night sitting on his bed talking, revising tables or something of the sort, or reading to your younger child. Quite a few mothers worked with their two or three year old at the same time as their five year old and reported it was satisfactory.
Efficiency
Remember when you are doing this program that you are much more efficient than a teacher with a full class of children. Your child has a turn at the game at least every second time, and he has one to one attention.
Self-discipline
I suggest if you have someone else you can do the program with, if you can get together even irregularly (or on Facetime) it would be helpful, otherwise you will have to be very disciplined.
When I undertook these activities with my second daughter I was a particularly busy “working mum”, a vice principal at a big school. I was also leading several groups of mothers at other schools. Without the motivation of the weekly meetings and the moral strength and encouragement given to me by the other mothers I could never have maintained anything like a regular program with my daughter. Although I always had the best of intentions it was so much easier to say “Time for bed, dear” and read the evening paper - or even just start to clean up the dinner dishes.
But don’t give up if you can only get to it occasionally; It is amazing what undertaking even some of the program can achieve.
Establishing a working procedure
The following activities provide quite detailed suggestions about both WHAT to teach and practice with your child, and HOW to go about it. You may have to modify both the how and the what to suit your particular child and his stage of development and both your personalities and ways of working. However, all the activities have been tried and found to work by large numbers of parents working with their own individual child, so give them a try.
The activities are geared to learning to read, but include many different methods of assisting your child in this task. One thing I learned from observing individual parents with their own children was that children have many differences in the way they wished to learn, and this could be catered for in a one to one approach. So be sensitive to which things work best with your child and do more of those activities.
Activities are planned for three or four days of each week.
Try to set aside a small amount of time each day, rather than a long period in one or two days.
All parents involved in the initial study plus the author always found it hard to find the time which should not be more than 15 to 20 minutes a session. even though it should not be more than a 15 to 20 minutes a session. ?
But when they were going well, the children would ask/pester the parent to do a session
What if your child does not want to do the activities?
If your child is reluctant to do any activity, do not keep him at it for more than five minutes, you may be able to try again/continue it later.
If your child is continually uninterested or refuses to do an activity, you may get around this by offering some form of reward - for example the reading of a story when it is done, the use of some new material, or making it an alternative to going straight to bed. But mostly this can be overcome by making a really fun game of it, playing school and letting him be the teacher first and you the child, giving him plenty of control and lots of your attention.
Try to keep something new for each special time with him. Don’t let his sister read the new book to him before you have time to read it.
You must keep it informal and happy and not a chore for your child. The informal atmosphere of playing school or kinder where more than half of the time may be spent playing is likely to be of more value in the long run than a serious but unhappy period of hard work. However don’t let it be all play.
How do you get cooperation from a reluctant five year old? See Chapter 8 for more suggestions.
Values of program
One of the possible achievements in an individual situation is training in concentration, and concentration is of utmost importance in learning situations. It should be your aim to gradually stretch your child's span of concentration into longer and longer periods.
This will be more successful if you try to make sure that the task is not too difficult, well within his reach, yet a sufficient challenge to extend him. You may have to change the task to fit this requirement, by breaking it up into steps or making it more difficult.
Reading stories is an integral part of the program
It is strongly suggested that you also read at least one story each day to your child, as well as doing the activities, maybe initially as a reward.
Record sheets and stars
Get into a habit of using these as part of your positive reinforcement.
Get your equipment ready
The provision of the appropriate equipment is a very important problem. In the initial research study all equipment needed was provided to the participants weekly. I would love to do that but it is impractical.
I have included material that can be printed/photocopied, and much of the material suggested you will have, but it is often motivating to provide something new. You need to prepare carefully - it is very frustrating to start a session, for example to make a book and find you do not have something to stick the pictures on with, or a stapler to make a proper book. You can compromise - sticky tape will do.
So for every session the equipment needed is listed at the beginning, but I suggest that you look a few days or weeks ahead and get things you will need. Otherwise if you are like me, you will be held up when you have the perfect moment, because you are not ready.
EQUIPMENT NEEDED FOR ALL THE ACTIVITIES
The equipment needed for each day’s activities is listed at the beginning of the instructions.
These are suggestions for general equipment that would be helpful and needed frequently.
1. Books: firstly picture books from the local children’s library. If you are not a member of your local council library, it is easy to join with proof of your current address and photo identification or proof of signature. Most librarians allow pre-school children to borrow and I world start this as early as when your child is twelve months old if you can.
Secondly find out where you nearest educational bookseller is located. Ask at your local school or look in the telephone directory - they are not easy to find. Try to make time to have a really good browse among the pre-readers and very simple readers sometime. They are generally very happy to sell to parents but will not have much advice. These days here are a lot of things like phonic readers for sale on the internet.
2… A small stapler and a good pair of scissors.
3 A good supply of cardboard and paper. Reams of printer paper can be purchased at the supermarket, newsagents or OfficeWorks relatively cheaply. For cardboard, you can use cereal packets or shoe boxes or try an art and craft store.
4 A thick spirit pen, black.
When writing for your child to read, any plain (non cursive) font style is fine. (I use “helvitica” on my computer and for this book.) You can ask at your local school to get a copy of your state’s writing style and teach yourself to use it if you wish.
It is important to remember that teaching all names and words in lower case, rather than capitals (except for the capital at the beginning of names) is essential. You need to remember that words in lower case are much more varied in shape than capitals and therefore always much easier to read. (I am surprised that the people making street signs do not often take this into consideration!)
Some general hints on writing are: go slowly, keep your letters very close together and words well spaced. Use a black texta that has a thicker line for a clearer mark. Size of the letters should be much larger than you generally use as an adult when writing (about 80 pt on a computer). Or print out the words on your computer quite large.
5. Record sheets and reward stickers.
Make your records sheets. And you can buy some lovely shiny gold stars. Or as Jemma suggested to me - use the stickers from the apples!