Living in beautiful Northern VA and coming up on day three soon to be day four snowed in come Wednesday I can assume we have parent Kossacks with school aged children who are almost at their wits ends of what to do to keep them busy and occupied. Well speaking from experience as a teacher may I recommend a few items that are sure to keep them busy, hopefully entertained, and maybe get them ahead of their school work. In this day and age hopefully your child’s teacher has email and you can get in contact with them for information on what your child is doing. I also hope that your child’s teacher is professional enough to respond back especially if they are snowed in.
1. First and the Language Arts/English teachers of the world will thank you for this is to make sure that they are reading at least 20 minutes a day. With the Netflix, Xbox, or whatever else you can imagine with all the free time, reading may be last on the list. Make sure that they are reading and it doesn't even have to be the assigned book from class(although it should) and talk about it with them. If they see you are interested in what they are reading they will be interested in what they are reading. You can even have them read something of their choice first and then an assigned reading next day. 20 minutes of reading has been shown to help with vocabulary development and reading comprehension. Who knows, if they read something they like, you can use it to have a great parent child bonding moment.
2. Create flash cards. If your child was smart enough to bring home their materials from school (and since they are children of Kossacks they must be smart) you can help them create flash cards to help them review material from school. Just take simple notebook paper and you can fold it into 8 pieces for 8 cards, do note though that if they use marker it will show through, use a pen or a pencil. I have even heard of students create a mini trivial pursuit game putting multiple subjects on a notecard.
3. If you have coloring materials like pencils or markers have your child skim through a section of a textbook and create a coming attractions movie poster that will help them preview an upcoming unit. This will help them by using text features like title, subtitle, captions, and other parts of a text to predict what they will be learning about. This will allow them to be creative with the poster but also get them thinking about an upcoming unit. You can then have them explain the poster to you.
Well these are just a few thoughts hope you like them and try to enjoy these moments with your child.