LEARN TO READ AND HAVE FUN WHILE DOING IT!
As we get ready to embark on our year of officially homeschooling, I’m elbow deep in planning out a fun and personalised learning journey for my children. When speaking to a lot of parents about homeschooling, the overwhelming response has been “I couldn’t do that. How would I know what to teach? How would I know what level my kids are meant to be at? How would I keep them from falling behind?”
Do you also wonder what homeschool activities you need to do? Or whether you need to have an official numeracy and literacy program for kids? The beauty of homeschooling is that you get to drop expectations of what level your children should be performing at, and start catering exactly to their current abilities. Another huge appeal of homeschooling is that you are also able to follow your children’s interests.
That being said, I personally am still very conscientious that our children develop the fundamental skills to become confident, successful learners. This includes developing their literacy and numeracy skills. In fact, good literacy skills are an important foundation for future academic and life success. Literacy helps children develop the knowledge and skills needed for education, training and the workplace. It helps them become ethical, thoughtful, informed and active members of society.
But does that mean we have to pull out textbooks and an official literacy program? You can if that’s your thing. But in our home we will be exploring literacy through play.
Support reading at home with fun literacy activities for preschool and primary school aged children.
You may have heard “play is the work of the child” - and for good reason too, because for children play is serious learning. What’s more, research shows that children not only learn through play, but they learn BETTER! Scientists have discovered that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain, but if it is experienced through play it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions! So the more opportunities we provide children to play, the more efficiently they will be able to master new skills - and that includes learning to read!
As well as ensuring our house is literacy and language rich (for example having visual displays, books and mark making resources), we will also have short sessions that focus on phonics, reading, writing/spelling and text types.
Some of the literacy activities we will engage in are:
Secret Sounds: exploring a phonics focus (the sound letters make) through games such as sound hunts, eye spy and sensory play (e.g. leaf drawings for the letter ‘L’, finding worms in the garden for the letter ‘W’)
Fine Motor Skills Play: Developing find motor skills (finger and hand dexterity) is an important precursor for being able to write. So we will have lots of activities that help develop these skills such as playing with play dough, magnetic tiles, tinkering with nuts and bolts, board games and puzzles.
Bookish Play: Using small world and dramatic play to represent and explore books through free play.
Journalling: we will keep a regular journal (at least fortnightly) where we will work together to record a journal. This will help with developing text type familiarity, vocabulary, sentence structure, and reflection skills.
Everyday reading and writing opportunities: recipes, letters, packaging, street signs and maps, etc.
Story time: we will use story time to explore text type features and comprehension.
Creating our own books: working together to move through a writing cycle of planning, drafting, writing/illustrating plus publishing our own stories.
ABC Reading Eggs: an award winning online program that includes hundreds of one-on-one reading lessons that teach children essential early literacy skills, including phonics and sight word recognition. (Parents can also access detailed assessment reports to track their child’s progress, and print out certificates and worksheets, which supplement the program).
Homeschool and home education resources - how to support literacy and reading at home.
How do you know what to teach? It has to be one of the most common questions I’ve seen pop up from parents considering homeschooling.
Literacy and learning to read can be one of the most daunting areas for parents to support. Without a fundamental understanding of how children learn OR the building blocks to learning to read and write, it can feel like you don’t know where to start. But just like all things I’ve come to experience in parenthood, when it comes to raising and educating children “it takes a village”. And for our family (and many homeschooling families), that “village” can sometimes involve using programs to support home learners.
One of the programs we will be using to support literacy learning at home is ABC Reading Eggs. ABC Reading Eggs is a program that I am very familiar with as an educator. It was used in the schools I worked at to support our literacy program, provide both online and offline resources for the classroom, PLUS it was offered to families to help further their children’s literacy and numeracy development at home.
The beauty of ABC Reading Eggs is that it is personalised to each child (lessons match their ability and are never too easy or too hard) AND it is aligned to the Australian Curriculum - so for parents who are working towards sending children to school, it can help prepare for school success.
Best of all, ABC Reading Eggs helps children learn to read in a fun and engaging way!
It is my personal experience that ABC Reading Eggs helps make learning to read easy and fun for kids aged 2–13. It uses a progressive sequence of highly interactive lessons, games, activities and over 3,000 e-books. The comprehensive program is designed by expert Australian educators and has been used by over 20 million children worldwide. Based on scientific research and the most up-to-date learning principles, ABC Reading Eggs also uses a highly motivational reward system, which keeps children engaged while they learn to read.
Online Homeschool Programs - are there positive screen time options?
But isn’t screen time bad? While there is a great deal of controversy around screen time, it is in fact not really screen time itself that is negative, but rather excessive screen time that can be harmful.
Educational programs like ABC Reading Eggs can be responsibly provided as a great option for positive screen time in a way to support a child’s learning.
I personally value how ABC Reading Eggs supports my children’s development on two levels.
Firstly, because it encourages literacy development in a way that aligns with my own philosophy - through play AND using an approach which supports phonics and comprehension. The interactive program includes a range of quality educational lessons, games, activities and ebooks. This literacy program actively involves children - they aren’t mindlessly staring at a screen. What I really love is that the learning doesn’t end with the app. You will get emailed progress reports of what lessons your child has covered PLUS ‘home learning tips’ to reinforce their learning with hands on experiences (such as using different materials like plasticine, paint or sand to create the letter they just explored). ABC Reading Eggs also provide a wide range of bonus materials including free printables.
Secondly, it’s also worth considering how we support our children develop Information and Communication (ICT) capabilities. The reality is that (for most people) we are participating in a knowledge-based economy and technologically sophisticated society. ICT capability involves learning to make the most of digital technologies available, adapting to new ways of doing things as technologies evolve and limiting the risks in a digital environment.
So when using programs like ABC Reading Eggs, we can support children to become capable and confident technology users. For example, guiding them to locate the app and independently log in using their personalised log in details, helping familiarise them to identify aspects of the app such as finding the home screen and logging out, alongside encouraging them to consider why certain apps require that we log in and out (i.e. cyber safety).
Steps to homeschool success.
When it comes to homeschool (or even preschool at home and preparing children for school) the first key to success is taking a PERSONALISED approach. This means considering your child or children - what are their needs, abilities and interests?
The next step is to consider whether your country has curriculum standards. In Victoria, we have eight key learning areas which we need to provide regular and efficient instruction on - whether in a school or home education. BUT we can decide what to include in these areas to best reflect our individual child’s needs.
It can still be daunting facing these - but you simply need to break it down. What do you already know and what educational resources do you have to support learning of these areas home? Will some of these learning areas already be addressed in activities you already do in everyday life - for example, baking. Baking can involve reading and writing recipes, reading ingredients on packaging, measuring ingredients, understanding chemical changes in the cooking process, considering the nutritional profile of what you bake. So in that one activity you have literacy, numeracy, science and health.
Finally, find your village - consider whether you will enlist external programs, sign up for certain classes or even partner up with other families.
…and have fun! Enjoy the time you spend with your children. Learning can and should be fun and engaging. What’s more - YOU are probably the best person to make that magic happen!
If you would like to discover the ABC Reading Eggs for yourself, sign up for a FREE 30-day trial https://readingeggs.com.au/inf35 .
This blog has been sponsored by ABC Reading Eggs. All opinions are my own. As mentioned in the blog - ABC Reading Eggs is a program I have used for many years (I have even purchased myself for this year) and also one implemented in many schools and education settings I have worked at.