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Creative Teaching at Home
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Children can sometimes be difficult to teach, for a variety of different reasons. I know, for me,
my second child was just plain stubborn. He was just completely resisting the learning process.
Once he finally embraced it, he was reading like a champ! Another common reason children
struggle with learning is ADHD. As moms, we often have to adopt creative teaching methods at
home to get our children off on the right foot. The following article, by a mom with four kids of
her own, showcases some fabulous creative teaching methods!
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Help Your Kids To Read Better!
By Anna-Marie Stewart
One of my blog visitors asked me to write a bit about how I got Kyle to read after she'd read some posts about
him and his ADHD so I thought, yeah, why not?
Basically, what I did was really easy. I forced Kyle to read without him even knowing it. I started off with
simple stuff, like road signs. They're big and bright and attention grabbing, and most have pictures to go along
with the words. Everywhere we went, I'd point out a road sign and ask him to tell me what it meant. It worked,
and it wasn't long before he started reading ALL road signs, with our without pictures and feeling really proud of
himself for being able to do it.
We have a gazillion books at home, and I've always read to my kids, but with Kyle I started to 'cheat'. I'd
leave out exciting bits, or just read a few words from each page and make the story REALLY short. I started
doing that with books and stories he was already familiar with so that he'd KNOW I was leaving stuff out, and
he'd call me on it. I'd say, well how do you KNOW what's missing. I can read, can you? He actually took on the
challenge.
He started sneaking books up to his room. (I say sneaking, but in reality he just THOUGHT he was sneaking them
and I let him think that). Now to me, it was brilliant, he'd NEVER shown an interest in books before, so I took it
as a good sign and didn't mention it to him.
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Another thing I did was whenever he wanted to watch tv I would make him hit the info button before watching a
program to bring the synopsis up, and I'd read it out to him. When I wasn't around, he'd sit flicking through the
channels and looking at the synpsis for each program to see which words he recognized. It was a good habit to get
into as he now NEVER watches a program without reading what it's about first.
We also get reading in another way whenever we're out, and that's by using cars. Yep, cars. We read the license
plates to see if we can make up words from the letters on them. Try it, it can be quite amusing ;)
One of the MAIN things in getting him to read was, of course, sweets! With his ADHD there are a LOT of things
we try to keep out of his way, such as e colours and additives. My kids only get sweets on Saturdays and a very
limited amout too. As the others are in school I started taking Kyle with me on the Friday to buy the sweets
ready for the Saturday. I gave him the choice of ANY sweets he wanted so long as they had no e colours or
additives.
It worked! He now looks at every sweet packet and even every food packet to see if it's something he's allowed
to have or not.
Kyle also loves the pc and for a while we had 2 pc's right next to each other. He'd play his games and I'd work
on my ezine and ebooks. Every time he needed help he would ask. Of course, I was working, so sometimes he'd
have to wait for an answer. He got impatient and tried to read for himself. I'd tell him to say it out loud and if
he read something wrong I'd help him to see what it actually said and it just took off from there.
All the while, more and more books have been disappearing from the living room.
It's VERY rare he ever asks for help with his reading now, and frequently comes running from his room to read to
me about tarantulas, bugs, sharks and anything else he's found interesting.
I hope this helps some of you out there.
===============Resource Box===========
Discover how a mom with four unruly kids avoided
a breakdown with this surprise discovery! 12-page
guide reveals 32 ways to keep your kids occupied,
happy and focused. It’s a parent’s dream come true!
http://annamarketing.com/FTS/32Ways.htm
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