This is a sponsored guest post.
Covid made every parent a teacher. This was a stressful time for everyone, but may have been especially stressful for you as a parent if you had no clue where to even start teaching your children. Now that students are back in the classroom, hopefully you have learned the important part that parents play in learning at home. With the skills you were forced to develop during this uncertain time, you can start being an active part of your young children’s educational development before they ever step foot in a classroom. Who knows, maybe the pandemic inspired and empowered you to homeschool your kids all together.
Early Childhood Development
You can start with the youngest of your babes by reading to them, talking to them, some parents even go as far as teaching sign language to their babies. These are all great things, but one of the ways you can make sure that your child is not only prepared to go to school, but a little ahead of the curve when they get there is by teaching them the alphabet. The alphabet is the most important and fundamental tool that all of us use every day for the rest of our lives in reading and writing. What was the first song you learned? It might have been “Itsy bitsy Spider” or “Row row row your Boat” but it was most likely the “Alphabet Song.”
Learning Techniques
You may have taught your kid to sing the ABC’s, but your work is not done. In order to create pathways in the brain there are three main senses we need to use when developing a new skill. In learning we use audio, visual, and kinesthetic or touch. Rather than your child listening to you sing the ABC song, you could give them a hands on audio, visual and kinesthetic project all in one. The easiest and most entertaining way to teach the alphabet in an effective way is through letter anchor charts. Teachers use these to help with letter identification, both upper and lower case. These charts also help connect letter sounds to familiar words. The letter charts are referred to as letter anchor charts because they help students solidify, or anchor, letter sounds and vocabulary starting with that letter.
Letter Anchor Charts
These interactive letter charts make it fun for kids to build each letter. Your child will be anxious to find out what each letter is destined to become. In a few of the examples on the website you will see the letter “Q” is made into a queen, “W” transformed into a worm, and the letter “D” a dog. It is important that the words taught in association with each letter are already commonly known to the child, and that they could identify a picture of said object. The experience will also help create connections in the brain that will assist with lifelong retention and learning. On this website you will find an entire lesson plan written by teachers. You can be confident that you are giving your child the best opportunity to learn and grow intellectually with this outline. Most parents don’t come equipped with a degree in elementary education, so why not leave the lesson plans to the experts?
Mommy Guilt
We as moms rarely feel like we measure up. There are so many demands on us day in and day out. With online resources such as this, you can take the stress out of teaching your children at home. Heaven forbid another pandemic comes along, but if it does you will be more than prepared with these resources! Not only will your stress levels decrease, but your kids will think you are the coolest, most fun mom around because these hands-on activities are engaging for children. They won’t even know they are working! With the effects of the Coronavirus still looming over us, our families are spending more time at home together. If you take advantage of this special time with your kids and be a hands-on part of their learning process it will create memories for them that are sure to last a lifetime.
