Think Christmas During the Back to School Sales

While many parents can't afford to put away stuff for Christmas in August other adults are looking for inexpensive ways to put away things away for children for Christmas. This time of year many retailers are putting out school supplies at amazing prices. You can find name brand art supplies like Crayola at cheaper than dollar store prices every where you look as the sale get quite competitive. Perhaps you aren't putting a child into school so why do you care?

Perhaps you do look for inexpensive little items to give out at Halloween for kids who can't have candy. I just discovered a neighbor's child with allergies and I'm thinking of alternatives for candy this Halloween so he doesn't miss out at our house.

I know others who want to give something at Christmas but money is tight. Art supplies at Christmas are always more expensive than they are during back to school season. If you know a child who likes crayons or markers this is the time of year to buy them. The name brands like Crayola are cheaper now than you will find the generic brands at Christmas.

Even adults have gotten into coloring these days and colored pencils and pens are often on sale as well. If you know someone who loves to color buy the supplies while they are on sale and it will make a nice inexpensive gift come Christmas.

My other suggestion is for adults who want to donate for toy drives at Christmas but may have limited funds to help. With the sales going on at back to school you can donate crayons, markers, and colored pencils with a limited budget if you buy them now and donate them during those holiday toy drives.

Back to School Shopping 2010

I ran across this Wal-Mart vs. Target Shopping Blog entry and wanted to share it with others who may find it interesting.

The author breaks down her school supply shopping list and summarizes that Wal-Mart is only a slight winner in the contest. As someone who no longer has to buy classroom supplies, I still feel for my former colleagues and those parents who are buying. I also know there are cost conscious homeschoolers in the market. I always buy art supplies for Christmas presents at this time of year. You cannot beat the prices on markers, crayons, and colored pencils that you find now. The prices in December are far more expensive.

For those of you interested in reading her review you can find it at Have Fun Teaching.

As I find more helpful back to school information I will post it.

Picture Credit: http://morguefile.com/archive/display/189442

Back to School Letter to the Teacher

If you have received a request from your child's teacher to write a personal letter introducing your child, take the invitation seriously.

Include a positive introduction to your child.

Take the chance to discuss any academic, learning disabilities, or health related issues you wish the teacher to be aware of in the coming year. Let the teacher know of any issues that you think will be relevant to the child's performance in school.

Stay focused on this year and try to move beyond and bad feelings that might have come from previous school years. Focus on creating the best year possible.

If you are looking for new challenges for your child mention this in the letter. This can be a good time to put these issues before the teacher. However, make sure you frame it as a positive, not a negative or an attack against another teacher.

Identify what has worked for your child. As a parent, you have had the most experience with your child. What behavioral strategies, learning strategies, memory techniques, and other educational techniques have worked for your child? This is important information for the teacher to know. Make sure you record this in the letter.

Read More

Picture Credit woodleywonderworks flickr.com

Back to School Math Warm Ups

Athletes know that it is hard to start running hard from a “cold start.” One should stretch and warm up before beginning any athletic exercise. Getting kids ready for school is really no different. Sending them back into school with a cold start can be very hard on many students. Give them a positive start to the school year with some warm ups.

Find age appropriate natural ways to reintroduce or continue to practice summer math activities. There are many household activities that require math. Shopping, cooking, cleaning, and house repairs are the most obvious. Many children’s games quickly fall into math practice. Children can be helped to remember math facts, measurement, fractions, geometry, and yes even algebra with some creative approaches.

Consider using math websites or other games to give children a chance to review or preview next year’s coming math attractions. This isn’t about drill and kill but more of that athletic stretch and preparation. The mind is reacquainting itself with old material and previewing new material that is coming. This is a chance for parents to find sites that will be useful in the coming year should your child need additional practice or challenges to stay motivated in learning.

This need not be a long procedure but a short time spent can produce dividends.

The following links are to areas on this blog that have math links sorted that you can use with your child to review, preview, or teach new math lessons.
Math Links

Multi Age Sites

Early Childhood Sites


Photo credit: whgrad flickr.com

Help Your Child Get Ready for the Back to School Essay

In many schools some version of the Back to School essay is standard. It generally has something to do with what the child did during summer vacation. For some students the “essay” is merely a few sentences strung together to reintroduce the concepts of brainstorming and sentence structure. For others it is a more detailed assignment to provide a writing sample for the beginning of the year. What ever the level of expectations for the assignment, parents can help children prepare in a simple, easy, and relaxing manner before returning to school.

Before panic emerges we will not be discussing essay writing or practice essays in this blog. That is counter productive and tends to just make kids frustrated and bored with the whole writing process before they even get to school.

Instead I am going to talk about ways to activate prior knowledge. One of the challenges as teachers when we use this topic is while many children have had active summers, when presented with a topic about summer say they did nothing. So one of the first steps in helping your child prepare is to talk about what your child enjoyed this summer. It should a casual conversation, not a quiz. Try to generate some ideas and stories about the things you did as a family, adventures at camp, outings with friends, or trips to see family. These are things you want to be fresh in your child’s mind.

Take out some family photographs from the summer. Pictures are a great way to trigger memories and get children talking. They can also be a wonderful way to work on categorizing. Talk about the photographs as stories. Younger children may pick one photograph that they will write their sentence on. Older children may end up with three photographs that best tell the story of summer and these will be the three main ideas. Again you are not working on writing at all at this point just generating memories and helping to organize ideas into categories.

This may be a great time to make a summer scrapbook with your child organizing photographs and having your child help label them and putting descriptions about what happened where to help all of you remember later. You can transcribe what the child says. The focus at this point is oral generation of stories. If the child wants to write by all means encourage it. However, the key is generating ideas and stories, not forcing the writing process. The more able your child gets at generating stories orally, the easier it gets to work with moving that towards the physical act of writing. If you can improve the rehearsal process, you can have a wonderful impact on the actual writing that occurs.

Even if the child’s teacher decides not to use this assignment this year, you have helped your child organize summer memories and taught valuable strategies for brainstorming and prewriting for future endeavors. The more you rehearse organizational strategies the more natural they become.

Back to School

This blog has a readership of public, private, and home schooling members. Most articles and links apply across the board, some more to specific groups.

Back to school is a term most strictly applied to those returning to school, but many home schoolers are also returning to a fall schedule, looking at curriculum, and school supplies for a new year. The suggestions in this article may or may not prove useful.

For those returning to a school schedule this may be a good time to think about reviewing and previewing prior to a new school year. Summer is always a good time to find activities that fit a child’s learning style. There are links for all curriculum areas on this blog. If your child struggled with a subject last year, this can be a great time to find an alternate approach to learning it. This can also be a great time to preview any challenges you might be headed for next year. Some districts post curriculum online, I will also list Ohio and MA frameworks links to give you some general ideas of what may be covered at specific grade levels. It can give you a starting point.

Consider making some file folder games to help get back into the spirit of learning:
File Folder Activities

Tips for saving money on school supplies:
Shop Wisely for School Supplies

How to get started on a schedule again:
Start a Back to School Schedule

Resources for the New School Year
Resources to Improve the School Year

Start the School Year with the Right Approach Improving Communication

Frameworks:

Ohio Frameworks

Massachusetts Frameworks