Public schools are a vast money pit. Education officials seem to prefer inefficiency and mediocrity. We could have better schools at less cost. This book explains how. Bruce Deitrick Price is the country's most prolific and aggressive writer on education. He is good at explaining the root causes, the problems that typically occur, and the ideological obsessions that lead our Education Establishment astray. This book presents 65 articles divided into 10 themes: Reading; Math; Weird Theories and Methods; Common Core; Historical Background; Guilty as Charged; Where Are Our Leaders; and What to Do Now. You can read the articles in any order and dip in wherever you want. This is pleasant reading about grim topics. If we don't save the public schools, we're not going to save very much else.
Home Education consists of six lectures by Charlotte Mason about the raising and educating of young children (up to the age of nine), for parents and teachers. She encourages us to spend a lot of time outdoors, immersed in nature, handling natural objects, and collecting experiences on which to base the rest of their education. She discusses the use of training in good habits such as attention, thinking, imagining, remembering, performing tasks with perfect execution, obedience, and truthfulness, to replace undesirable tendencies in children (and the adults that they grow into). She details how lessons in various school subjects can be done using her approach. She concludes with remarks about the Will, the Conscience, and the Divine Life in the Child. Charlotte Mason was a late nineteenth-century British educator whose ideas were far ahead of her time. She believed that children are born persons worthy of respect, rather than blank slates, and that it was better to feed their growing minds with living literature and vital ideas and knowledge, rather than dry facts and knowledge filtered and pre-digested by the teacher. Her method of education, still used by some private schools and many homeschooling families, is gentle and flexible, especially with younger children, and includes first-hand exposure to great and noble ideas through books in each school subject, conveying wonder and arousing curiosity, and through reflection upon great art, music, and poetry; nature observation as the primary means of early science teaching; use of manipulatives and real-life application to understand mathematical concepts and learning to reason, rather than rote memorization and working endless sums; and an emphasis on character and on cultivating and maintaining good personal habits. Schooling is teacher-directed, not child-led, but school time should be short enough to allow students free time to play and to pursue their own worthy interests such as handicrafts. Traditional Charlotte Mason schooling is firmly based on Christianity, although the method is also used successfully by secular families and families of other religions.
"Letter-a-week" may be a ubiquitous approach to teaching alphabet knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's an effective one. In No More Teaching a Letter a Week, early literacy researcher Dr. William Teale helps us understand that alphabet knowledge is more than letter recognition, and identifies research-based principles of effective alphabet instruction, which constitutes the foundation for phonics teaching and learning. Literacy coach Rebecca McKay shows us how to bring those principles to life through purposeful practices that invite children to create an identity through print. Children can and should do more than glue beans into the shape of a "B"; they need to learn how letters create words that carry meaning, so that they can, and do, use print to expand their understanding of the world and themselves.
The ultimate guide for parents who dream of having a little less chaos and a lot more time for the good things in life Written by mother of five, Nicole Avery, this book shows harried parents how, with just a bit of planning, family life can become easier to manage, less stressful, and decidedly more fun. "Dream on," you say? "I might as well try to herd cats as to get my kids to follow a lot of arbitrary rules!" And Nicole would agree, which is why Planning with Kids isn't like any other parenting guide out there. It was inspired by Nicole's blog of the same name, which, over the past three years, has garnered a huge audience of likeminded parents who have achieved nothing short of miraculous results following her advice. While other prescriptive guides offer mums and dads cook-cutter solutions to the challenges of raising kids, this handbook focuses on one simple, straightforward idea: by implementing a few simple strategies for how you do things, you'll make more time for you to be you and your kids to be kids. You'll find strategies for streamlining and enhancing everything from the routines of daily life, to family relationships, to budgeting and finances, playtime and much more! Contains a full section on menus and cooking, including recipes, supported online by a planning-with-family meal planner Divided into sections so that readers can dip-in and dip-out for information as they need it as their family expands and grows up!
This book offers parents, teachers, and caregivers 101 creative, multi-sensory, and hands-on activities to help children develop skills and understanding in the four key areas of alphabet knowledge: letter shapes, letter names, letter sounds, and the ability to write letters. Your purchase includes digital access to more than 800 pages of printable alphabet resources to use with the activities in the book. Research shows that successful reading begins with recognizing letters and knowing the sounds they make. Therefore, teaching the alphabet is a great way for caring adults to set young children on the road to reading success. Inside this treasured resource book you will find:"How to" ideas for making letter learning fun and relevant to your childAnswers to common questions such as:* Do I teach letter names or letter sounds first?* Do I teach uppercase letters or lowercase letters first?* In what order should I teach the letters?* How many letters should I introduce at a time? * What letter style should I teach first: print, D'Nealian, or cursive?* How do I teach letters that make more than one sound?Practical advice for dealing with common letter learning challenges, such as:* Developing the proper pencil grip* Writing with the proper strokes* Reversing lettersWith 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet, learning letters is fun and easy!
Teaching the alphabet is foundational for reading and writing. Around the age of 2, children begin showing interest in learning alphabet letters. While some kids learn letters very quickly, others need more repetition and time to learn letters. This book will teach your children how to write the ABC's with easy and simple steps.
Teach your child the alphabet Most children begin recognizing some letters between the ages of 2 and 3 and can identify most letters between 4 and 5. This means that you can start teaching your child the alphabet when he's around 2, toddlers learn differently from older children, so don't pull out the flashcards and audio tapes just yet. Instead, rely on visual aids such as colorful alphabet picture books - your child will have a great time pointing out the letters he knows, as well as colors, shapes, animals, and other objects in the book. The first step in teaching the alphabet is getting your child interested in books contain print, which is made up of letters. Teach your child collection books 1-Teach your child the names of colors 2-Teach your child the alphabet 3-Teach your child the numbers
'When should I teach my child the alphabet?' is a step-by-step guide that explains the stages that babies, toddlers, and preschoolers go through on their journey to reading.
