My Philosophy: Skills Versus Content

Any of you who are using the classical method of homeschooling already know something about this distinction. Classical ed presents children with beautiful, important content for observation, imagination, and memorization, but the complete absorption of the particular content itself is not the goal.

Example: It's great to know the fifty states and capitals in second grade, but exercising that memorization muscle is the key. Training that little developing brain. We want them to have something beautiful and important to work that muscle, but it's no sweat if they practice the whole year and only get ten of them.

However, there are several primer skills that must be in place for the early grades to go smoothly. Verification and practice on these skills helps ensure a smooth acquisition of basic reading and writing skills. I mention activities to acquire and strengthen these skills in this posts, but click on the links provided to get a fuller list with pictures and instructions for implementation.

(As I've said before, I am not a special ed teacher. I am just an opinionated mama with a rusty MA in Counseling on the shelf and a whole lot of "special" up in my house, so this list is not comprehensive.)

1. Patterning, Go Togethers, Opposites: The concept of things "going together" or fitting a pattern is VERY important for reading and language skills.

Example: Think of the last time you talked to a non-native English speaking customer service representative. You needed to have a bank of realistic possibilities and a way to eliminate the outlandish options, if you had any chance of getting through that conversation. If "put toffee in the border" is just as likely as "turn off the recorder," then you had no hope. Same for your kids. Words and sentences have patterns as do math problems. Developing the skill of detecting and working in patterns is SUPER IMPORTANT for reading and math.

2. Order in Problem Solving: Have you ever told your child to go look for an object and see them run from room to room without systematically searching any one room? Children have to learn that there is a system to problem solving, or it takes, like, a billion times longer to do anything, including school work. Skill one is about learning that there is a pattern, this skill is about learning how to systematically work the pattern to efficiently find answers. Luckily, this skill is developed in the presentation of the other tasks on this list. Teaching a child to line up the options and try them one at a time from left to right helps develop mental order, systematic problem solving, and correct eye-teaming for reading.

3. Rhyming, Isolating and Ordering Sounds: Skills one and two teach the child how to detect and orderly work a pattern, whereas this skill works on the specific patterns involved in reading. A child may be already skilled in this area, but it is important to verify these skills before a child can be expected to read with any kind of fluency. This can be done with or without knowing any letters. Kids can sort objects or pictures based on rhyme or beginning sound well before they can identify sounds with the written figure.

Example 1: Cards depicting bear, chair, pear, hat, rat, cat, dog, log, and frog can be sorted long before letters are learned.

Example 2: A small box of real and toy objects like nut, nail, nickel, dog, duck, deer, rat, ribbon, and rake can be sorted by beginning sound into three piles long before letters are learned. After letters are starting to be learned, simply include letter tiles along with the objects.

4. Three Dimensional Fine Motor Development: Mastering the pencil grasp is the main fine motor skill for early learning. However, there is more to writing than grasp and it's frustrating to be mastering letter forms while trying to acquire pencil control skills like wrist twisting, pinching, and pressure skills. Again, your child may have already mastered these, but verifying the skills is recommended.

• Placing your child's paper on a styrofoam surface encourages gentle pencil pressure and force
• Spooning beads from one container to another or using a manual egg beater work on twisting motions
• Designing with perler beads and working with tweezers, tongs, chopsticks, fingernail clips, and clothes pins all help develop a controlled pinch.
• Punch pin tasks directly strengthen the tri-pod pencil grasp.

Now I don't use these with every child. I leave them out to play with while I'm working with another child, but the only kids that "have" to do these as a part of school are the kids who need some support in that area.