Lulu is in prep and is learning to read.
It's quite a fascinating experience to observe her going from not being able to read at all to start to read whole sentences.
I know as a first time school mum, in the lead up to school there is so much anticipation as to what they should know and what they shouldn't.
The reality is there is no pressure for them to know anything, from the school system.
But there does appear to be an underlying pressure from families as we send our children to 'preschool learning programs'. Suddenly there is a divide between those that have a 'head start' and those that don't.
I'll be honest and say that Lulu did do a preschool reading class and in all honesty, she did not gain a lot from it other than an introduction to letters. She is not excelling in her class as a result of the program, nor did I expect her too.
What I have now learnt though is one of the few things they do focus on in the first year of school is Sight Words.
Our 100 Sight Words are broken up into various colours, with the children only moving onto the next colour after they have mastered the colour before.
For anyone that is interested, here is a download for the Golden Words and Red Words:
Download Here
We play lots of different games such as memory, bean bag toss and hopscotch to help enhance the familiarisation of these words.
Thankfully Lulu is keen as mustard to learn so it really isn't a chore for her.
Cheers
Mandy.
We play lots of different games such as memory, bean bag toss and hopscotch to help enhance the familiarisation of these words.
Thankfully Lulu is keen as mustard to learn so it really isn't a chore for her.
Cheers
Mandy.
I just thought I'd point out to you in case you wanted to change it before anyone else notices, it's actually 'sight' not 'site'. I do that mistake all the time and my husband thinks it's hilarious.
ReplyDeleteWe are also doing sight words at the moment too. My friend suggested for learning them at the moment getting a big bowl of M&M's and putting each sight word on a different colour and when they get that word right they get the M&M corresponding to that colour. Good for when they are just starting out learning. Perhaps not so good when they hit 100 sight words.
Oh thanks Amanda, how ridiculous, a post on learning words and I had a major typo. lol.
DeleteWe are doing sight words too...Hunter is in his 3rd term of school (started term 4 in SA) and is up to violet - and I don't think there are many left after that....but he is whipping through them so now I've asked him to put them in a sentence for me!
ReplyDeleteIn violet we get there and their...he knew them both but he didn't know the difefrence between them - so we had a little lesson on is it here or there...and i in their so therefore it's mine or theirs...very tricky for the kids to grasp though!