Just as important, regular home study will help them develop good study habits and reinforce the
importance of education.
• At home, allow your child to work as independently as possible. Independent learning,
especially overcoming challenges, builds confidence, resiliency and good study habits.
• Home study should be regular (preferably daily). The length of study does not have to be long
and depends very much on your child’s age and abilities. For some five-year-olds, 5-10
minutes a day of focusing on their studies may be enough.
• Avoid summer learning loss by continuing home study during the summer months.
• Home study can consist of homework, or, in the absence of sufficient homework, it is up to
the parent to organize the study materials. This may consist of practicing a particular skill,
working on traditional exercise books, educational computer programs or other supplementary
activities to enhance their learning.
• If you do not have the time to oversee your child’s home study, then consider some sort of
academic after-school program.
To make the most of your child’s home study time, choose the materials he uses carefully:
• Ask yourself:
o how much of my child’s time is being spent learning vs. ‘time wasting’ with a
particular activity?
o How well is he being engaged?
o Is he progressing through materials or repeating work at the same level?
• Choose activities based on their educational value and engagement level rather than their
“fun” quotient. Ideally, kids should find study materials interesting and challenging. Activities
can also be fun, but don’t build the expectation that studying will always be fun, or that only
fun things are worth doing.
• Be organized, so that you always have materials available for your child to progress through in
a meaningful way.
• Remember to emphasize reading and math. If in doubt, materials which are based on school
curriculum's are a safe bet.
• Be realistic about your own time constraints. If you do not have the time to organize materials
every day for your child, then find a system (set of workbooks, online program, tutoring
program, etc.) that will make the process easier for you.
• If you are struggling to find appropriate activities, ask your child’s teacher for
recommendations.
There are countless free educational websites, many with quality materials. However, most of
these sites lack the structure to ensure your child will progress through material in a logical
way. Kids will tend to repeat the easiest or most entertaining activities rather than challenging
themselves. If you use these sites, manage your child’s use of them closely.
• Many commercial programs make significant claims of achievement and big promises,
including that the program will “adapt” to your child’s specific needs. Often, the promises
exceed the reality, and no program is going to work well with all children in all circumstances.
Ask your children’s teacher for suggested programs and, most of all, observe carefully and
decide for yourself if it is worthwhile.
• Don’t overdo online learning at the expense of traditional activities. Working on paper
encourages children to slow down, read and think. In contrast, the way we have learned to use
screens promotes scanning, guessing and tapping.
As the difficulty of exercises increases, the ability to work things out by hand (calculations,
drawings, underlining words, etc.) in an unrestrained fashion is important. It is how people
have been learning for centuries.
Paper-based activities also leave a trail of actual work, instantly comprehensible to a parent,
tutor or teacher. A computer-generated “progress report” does not give the same insights.
We recommend that students take a balanced approach, combining traditional learning with
online programs.
Taking responsibility and working independently are important qualities for school success.
• Establish rules. Every home needs rules that children
know and can depend upon. Make sure you enforce
the rules consistently.
• Make it clear to your child that he has to take
responsibility for what he does, both at home and at
school. For example, do not automatically defend
your child if his teacher tells you that he is often late
to class or is disruptive when he is in class. Ask for his
side of the story. If a charge is true, let him be
accountable for his choices.
• Promote respect for your child’s teachers. Never say or
do anything that will undermine their authority.
• Work with your child to develop a schedule of jobs to
do around the house. Children may complain about
chores but helping out gives them a sense of being
productive members of the household and is good for
their self-esteem.
• Show your child how to break a job down into small,
manageable steps, then to do the job one step at a
time. This works for everything— cleaning a room or
completing a big homework assignment.
• Make your child responsible for getting ready to go to school each morning—getting up on
time, making sure that he has everything he needs for the school day and so forth. If
necessary, make a checklist to help him remember what he has to do.
• Always look for new opportunities to let your child do something for themselves or ‘on their
own’. Get out of the habit of doing everything for them which can create helplessness
instead of confidence
Kids learn many things during the elementary school years, from self-discipline to working in groups,
but the critical academic skills are reading (literacy) and basic math (numeracy). The ability to read
quickly and effectively, and competency with basic number operations, are the core skills that kids use
to learn other subjects. The content that kids learn in social studies, science or other classes is
interesting and helps them learn to think critically. However, that content will be revisited again in
higher grades in much more depth and is less critical in elementary school.
• Emphasize basic reading and math skills in all home
learning activities.
• Encourage reading and language-based activities
(writing, spelling, etc.) throughout the day.
• Emphasize basic math skills and ensure sufficient
practice is done to achieve proficiency. Math, to a
greater degree than other subject areas, requires
proficiency in basic skills before students move on to
more difficult tasks. For example, if a child has not
mastered his multiplication tables, then he will
struggle with the concepts of multi-digit
multiplication, because he will be spending all of his time performing basic calculations
instead of trying to understand more advanced concepts.
• Math anxiety and underachievement in math is widespread, and largely caused by children not
mastering the basics. Ensure your child gets enough practice and masters these skills.
• Encourage mental math (doing math operations in your head) activities and help ensure your
child’s overall fluency and confidence with numbers.
• A significant part of the challenge of early math is not only about understanding concepts, but
mastering algorithms (the steps to solve different types of problems). Kids don’t typically
struggle with conceptualizing addition, but it takes a lot of practice, including memorization of
math facts, to gain confidence and do it competently.
• The key is learning by doing, repetition and not proceeding on to harder tasks until underlying
skills are mastered.
TIME FLIES
Together with your child, write down estimates of how long it takes each of you to do
certain tasks (such as getting ready for school or work in the morning, ironing a blouse,
making toast). Use a clock to time at least one of these tasks. Then take turns timing each
other. (Be realistic—it’s not a race).
• Talk with your child about what part of a job can be done ahead of time, such as deciding at
bedtime what to wear to school the next day.
• Talk about at least two places that you and your child go regularly where you must be on
time. What do you need to do to make sure you are on time?
Being on time or not being on
time affects other people. It is
important for children to
understand their responsibility
for being on time—it’s not just
for grown-ups
Learning to see big jobs in small
pieces can make them less
overwhelming for a child.
Older children are interested in life beyond school. You can help your child have a realistic sense
of that life and what he can do to prepare for it.
Talk with your child about what he wants to be and do in the future. Ask, for example,
“What job do you think you’d like to do when you get out of school? What kind of
education or training do you think you’ll need to get this job?”
• Suggest that your child pick two adults he or she knows and talk with them briefly about
their jobs. Help him think of at least three questions to ask. Have him write the questions,
leaving space for the answers. Here are some sample questions:
What is your job?
How long have you had it? Do you like it?
Did you need to go to college to get your job?
Did you need any special training?
What kind of classes do I need to take in high school for a job like yours?
• After the interview, talk with your child about what he learned.
• Next, show your child the help-wanted ads. Have him find ads for three jobs that he might
want to have in the future. Have him read aloud the requirements for a job and talk with him
about the skills, education and training he would need to have to do the work.
Help your child understand that
many jobs require advanced
education, and almost all jobs
require good reading and math
skills. Emphasize the importance
of being well-educated.
