Elementary Education GUIDE with Oyindamola

If your child is performing poorly in a particular subject, let say maths, don't just give in that maths his not his or her thing.

A child that seem poor in maths now can be a maths genius if the issues responsible for the poor performances are identified and resolved early.

So what could the issues be:
1. Wrong approach - sometimes the way a subject is approached can make the whole difference. If maths for instance is approached wrongly, kids will hate it.

2. Distraction - it could be that your child is just distracted and needs help to focus.

3. Extra help - kids capacities are not the same. Some kids naturally need extra help to get things going. The needed extra help could be extra home lessons.

4. Teachers personality or skills - in some occassions the teacher's personality or skills in impacting knowledge to kids can be the issue.

You just need to figure out the issues and resolve them.

Track your child quantitative capability.

This can help you have idea of how sound your child is quantitaively and also help him or her to better.

Make it an habit to throw quantitative questions to your child randomly and casually during conversations

For instance in the middle of a conversation
You can just tell ur primary 2 kid to tell u what 7 multiply by 8 is.

Or you can ask a primary kid how much he would save in total in 8 weeks if he saves N50 everyday.

Nothing formal...just bring out quiz out of simple conversations without them even noticing it.

Create some quality time for them this weekend!

TGIF!!!

Create time for your children this weekend.

DOs
Help them with their assignments

Review their works

Teach them basic things like multiplication table etc.

Organise in house debates and competition among them.

Play educational challenge and reward game with them.

DONTs
Dont spend the whole weekend watching African magic with them.

Dont allow them play uneducational games all weekend.

Dont leave them idle

Educational cartoons are very important to todllers and kids in elementary.

Not just any how cartoons...educational cartoons like nursery rhymes, mathematics for toddlers, abc rhymes etc. It sticks to their memories like magnet without no extra effort.

Download them of YouTube and play regularly for them. Unconsciously they master alphabets, numerals and even basic maths operations by themselves.

Another thing is, it help them with good and correct pronunciation.

Dear parents,

You can determine your children's performance this term.

There are 3 major parties that determine performance of kids in school.
1. Parents
2. The child
3. Teachers and the school

But of these 3 players...I believe the parents are the most important when it comes to performance of kids at their elenentary level.

The school and teachers can do their bits, but at the end of the day they are service providers.

The child doesn't even know the importance of performing well yet.

He's at best motivated by praise, prizes or some other incentives.

But he still doesn't grasp the real long term importance of good performance in school.

You as the parent are the center of control. You are in best position to adjust and readjust till you get the result you want from your child.

You control is in 3 areas
1. The school and teacher
2. Your child
3. Your home

In my next posts, I will talking about things you can do that will greatly influence your child's performance this term through these 3 control points.

Have a great day.

First day in second term?

How to help your children to adjust back to the routine:

Sometimes some kids find it a little difficult to quickly adjust back to classroom after holiday.

Especially when it is Christmas holiday, with the fun, parties, santa, trips and all, it can be a challenge to smoothly shift from fun to work mode.

But you can help them. You can ease the transition.

How?

1. Pamper them a little this first week. Don't just cut all the Christmas goodies off at once.

When they come back from school...give them some little treat here and there.

2. Please try as much as possible to get them all they need at school. New shoes, bags etc.
The excitement of having new stuffs will help a lot.

3. Show more interest in their school work. The more interest you show, the more they too put more interest.

Ask them to bring out their school notes and go over them together.

Help them with their assignments.

Ask them about details of things that happened in school; both the relevant and the irrelevant...lol.

4. Set term goals/challenge and reward for them and make sure you make good your promise.

You can say if your son makes first position in maths this term...you will get him a computer game.

Let the goal and reward be realistic.

You can set a first position challenge for a child that came 20th in class last term. Yes its possible but not realistic.

Also your offered reward should be motivating enough but realistic (something you can redeem).

I wish you and your children a beautiful second term.

Good morning dear parents.

After doing the analysis and performance evaluations we talked about yesterday on your child's last term performance, what is the solution to the identified problems?

If you discover that overall your child's performance has declined by say 10%, that is very significant.

By 10% decline, i mean he or she use to score a total average of 70 percent before but her last performance is like 63...60 or so.

You need to think about the possible root causes.

Don't just assume its a one-off thing.

What could be the problem?

1. Lack of focus
2. Change in learning atmosphere
(Did you change your child's school recently)
3. Change of teachers
4. Did you change your living environment or home routines recently?
5. What are other major recent changes at home or around..like change of home class teachers.
6. What changes have you noticed in your child recently...like being too playful, less attentive..withdrawn etc.

These among others are questions you can use as basis of troubleshooting what could be the issue.

Let me start with a question. Have you reviewed and appraised your kids' last term performance?

If no, please you need to take out time and review not just their report sheets or score cards, but every class note, class work, assignment notes, work book and all assessment or test sheets for last term.

There are 2 comparative analysis you must do.
1. What is your child's performance last term compared with the previous term.

Last term was the first term of this current session. If you compare your child's performance with that of the third term of the previous session, is the performance declining or improving?

What are his or her strengths and weaknesses?

I will advise you get a small book or journal for recording what you observe, so you can go back to the same record for a better and more insightful and comparative assessment and feedback at the end of this new term.

2. What is your child's performance relative to that of his class? What is is overall class position?

What is his position on subject basis? Did he win any award in any subject?

These are critical performance measurement that you cannot approach trivially.

Lastly, what are his or her teachers comments?

Not just the end of term comments. The various comments on his or her performance during the term.

Are there comments that suggest your kid have issues with concentration, or that say he is kind of socially withdrawn, or maybe they say he lacks interest generally.

These are not comments to gloss over without taking well planned actions.

I will continue in my next post so that this post doesn't get too long.

Some schools will resume on the 10th of January, while some a week after.

Are you getting your children ready for resumption?

I will be talking today about things you need to put into your plans to ensure your kids are well prepared for the second term.

Happy new year to you and your family!

May your home be filled with the bliss and peace of the season.

I wish you a beautiful xmas!

Oyindamola.

Christmas clothes are wonderful..they make our kids happy and beautiful on xmas day.

Xmas tree is just awesome...it creates that lasting memory.

Santa Claus is a sweet sweet visitor... he's the august visitor our kids love to meet in December.

Xmas parties, carols and funfairs are the life of the season...no kid will forgive you if you deprive them of all those fun.

Amusement park, cinema, ice cream and the popping corns...!!!

Food and drinks are great...xmas is not complete without them.

HOWEVER...as you put great efforts into planning a memorable xmas for your children this season...please, have a bigger plan on how you want to be more intentionally involved in their academic growth.

Dont over delegate...BE INVOLVED!

Compliments of the season Dads and Mums.