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Learning Tip: My busy week
Help your child plan his week with a homemade calendar.
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Learning Tip: Why? is a great question
Nurture a spirit of inquisitiveness and curiosity in your child.
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Learning Tip: Preparedness plan
Establish routines and emphasize the importance of being prepared.
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Learning Tip: Friendly contemplation
Help your child think about what friendship is and why she has chosen the friends she has.
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Learning Tip: Keep peer pressure at bay with role play
Prepare your child for difficult real-life situations before they happen.
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Learning Tip: TV time
Allow your child to make some of the choices in his daily or weekly routine.
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Learning Tip: A lost tooth lesson
Encourage healthier diet choices by showing your child how destructive sugar can be to teeth.
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Learning Tip: Classical mornings
Here’s a tip to help your child ease into morning if he tends to wake up grouchy.
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Learning Tip: Chore jar
Make chores more bearable by adding an element of chance to the responsibility.
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Learning Tip: Kid calendar
Allowing your child to keep his own calendar will help develop critical time-management and organizational skills.
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Learning Tip: What to wear
Help your child develop autonomy and sense of self.
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Learning Tip: Problem solving
Include your child in family discussions, and praise her when she uses her growing power of reason to help make decisions.
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Learning Tip: Pretend vacation
Have your child dream up family vacations to sharpen logic and reasoning skills.
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Learning Tip: Memory skills
Sharpen memory skills with this simple game.
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Learning Tip: Quirky questions
Encouraging your child to ask questions will make her less apprehensive and more apt to ask for answers to things she does not understand.
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Learning Tip: Socrates and the six-year-old
Allow your child to realize that answers are not always simple or final.
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Learning Tip: Encourage independence
Making simple meals and snacks for himself will allow him to feel accomplished.
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Learning Tip: Happy as kings
Inspire your child’s active imagination to create new worlds with things around her room.
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Learning Tip: Name that tune
Use your child’s love of music to play the classic guessing game.
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Learning Tip: Audio travel blog
Bring technology with you on long trips for your child to preserve the travel experience.
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Learning Tip: Music immersion
Use the web to immerse your child in music. Your child can explore and experiment to find which instrument or music speaks to him.
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Learning Tip: Supermarket storytelling
Nurture logic and creativity in your child at the supermarket.
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Learning Tip: Birding
Teach biodiversity and patience while taking a bonding field trip.
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Learning Tip: Not So Hidden Persuaders
Of course your child wants (NEEDS!) that high-fat, high-sodium kid's meal--it's got a toy! Here are two ways to teach your child a lesson about advertising.
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Learning Tip: Bright Kids, Dim Grades
Some kids need help learning how to learn. Help your child develop strategic thinking skills to improve grades.
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Learning Tip: Animal Inventions
Encourage imagination by conceiving wild, medieval-style creatures and their stories.
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Learning Tip: Now You're Cooking
Find the curriculum in your kitchen! Cooking covers mathematics, language arts, reading, science and social studies.
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Learning Tip: Right Brain or Left Brain?
Encourage your child to use his unique gifts to solve problems.
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Learning Tip: Stay Loose
Take a hint from a teacher: sometimes you need to let kids lead the way.
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Learning Tip: Teach by Talking and Listening
Quality time: there's never enough of it. But some of the simplest things--like talking and listening to our kids--can have the greatest impact.
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Learning Tip: Your Child's Self-Esteem
To raise a competent child who loves to learn, confidence is key.
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Learning Tip: Family Circle
In busy families, together time doesn't just happen. You need to make it happen.
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Learning Tip: Keep books in the home
Show your child that books and reading are important.
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Learning Tip: Agnes arrested Arnold at an airport
Pass time with your child by taking turns creating alliterative sentences for each letter of the alphabet.
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Learning Tip: Zany question and answer rhymes
When caught in traffic or waiting, pose a question and ask your child to answer it in rhyme.
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Learning Tip: Personal secretary
Offer your child opportunities to practice writing and spelling.
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Learning Tip: Spelling test prep
Assist your child in learning weekly spelling words using this technique.
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Learning Tip: License plate letters
Cure boredom and strengthen spelling with the classic car game.
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Learning tip: Career day
Playing this guessing game with your child might inspire her future.
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Learning tip: Use descriptive adjectives
Encourage your child to use descriptive language.
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Learning Tip: Keep a journal
Encourage your child to keep a journal to express his feelings.
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Learning Tip: Writing that informs
Show your child how reading and writing are useful in everyday life.
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Learning Tip: Play similes
Encourage your child to develop his poetic sensibilities with this game of similes.
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Learning Tip: My busy week
Help your child plan his week with a homemade calendar.
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Learning Tip: Who sits here?
When dinner isn’t quite ready, use this activity that gives her writing practice and occupies her time while she waits to dig in.
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Learning Tip: Give a Little, Gain a Lot
Provide your child with plenty of opportunities to read to younger children.
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Learning Tip: Hide, Seek & Read
Leave notes around the house for your child and encourage her to do the same for you.
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Learning Tip: Start a Book Club
If you've got an enthusiastic reader (or would like to nurture one!), get the ball rolling with a kids' book club.
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Learning Tip: Start a Family Blog
A family blog can be just the start to a junior journalist's career.
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Learning Tip: Child Poet
Use a child's natural inventiveness to inspire poetry.
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Learning Tip: Reading Aloud—It's Not Just for Toddlers
Reading aloud to your eight-year-old exercises his vocabulary and comprehension skills. And even big kids enjoy cuddle time!
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Learning Tip: Writing that Matters
Don't let writing be a bore. Show your child the power of her words.
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Learning Tip: The Write Topics
Reluctant writer? Make writing relevant with these fun journal topics.
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Learning Tip: Focus on "Write," not "Right"
Help your child start a journal for writing down his ideas and feelings.
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Learning Tip: Take It Easy
Encourage your child to read books that are easy for her in order to build her reading fluency.
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Learning Tip: Build a Library
Learn how to build a library of age-appropriate books your child will love.
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Learning Tip: Let New Readers Make Mistakes
When you listen to your new reader read aloud, try not to correct her mistakes right away.
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Learning Tip: Navigating Nonfiction
Explore the different sections of nonfiction books and their uses.
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Learning Tip: Go Ahead and Play Favorites
Go to the library to find and check out all the books written by a favorite author.
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Learning Tip: Show Me the Money
Trade coins with your child to show equivalent values.
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Learning Tip: Number search
Use this activity when driving in the car or while on a walk to practice number recognition.
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Learning Tip: Party math
Use everyday opportunities, like planning a party, to practice division.
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Learning Tip: I am thinking of a number …
Help your child develop his inference skills with a number guessing game.
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Learning Tip: Pizza math
Use everyday opportunities to teach fractions to your child.
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Learning Tip: Relationships: Count on it
To learn to solve arithmetic facts, try the count on strategy with your child.
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Learning Tip: Relationships: Twins
Learning arithmetic facts involves applying strategies to problem-solving, like the twin facts strategy.
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Learning Tip: Weigh away
At the grocery store, use the produce scale to create real-world problems for your child to solve.
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Learning Tip: Measuring sous chef
Cooking is a great way for your child to become familiar with units of measure.
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Learning Tip: Measuring mileage
Help your child learn that math and numbers are useful in the real world.
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Learning Tip: Money lessons
Encourage budgeting by helping your child see where their money goes.
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Learning Tip: Kids matching funds
Your child may not be ready for a 401k, but this matching funds exercise can help her realize the value of saving for the future.
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Learning Tip: Coupon clipper
Give your child the chance to use her math skills and help you save money at the same time.
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Learning Tip: Newspaper word problems
Use newspapers to engage your child in real-world math problems.
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Learning Tip: Figure It Out!
You use math every day. Next time you need to estimate the tax or decide what time to leave to reach your destination on time, ask your child to figure it out.
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Learning Tip: Frozen peas
Add frozen peas to cool down hot soups and add nutrition.
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Learning Tip: A new look at vegetables
Introduce a new perspective on vegetables, making them seem like an earned treat.
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Learning Tip: Birding
Teach biodiversity and patience while taking a bonding field trip.
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Learning Tip: Geographic diversion
Studying geography can be a fun, educational activity when stuck indoors.
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Learning Tip: Local history
Make your child’s introduction to history personal and interesting by comparing the differences in everyday life among your child, yourself and his grandparents.
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Learning Tip: Busy, busy world
A simple walk with your child through our busy world will increase his observation skills and vocabulary, as well as give insight into how the world works.
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Learning Tip: License plate learning
Strengthen your child’s knowledge of North American geography on your next road trip.
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Learning Tip: Geographic Mores and Morals
As your child is learning geography in school, use the opportunity to talk about culture and harmful stereotypes.
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Learning Tip: Human Time Machines
Curious about history? The library and Internet are great resources, but so are the people who have been there, done that.
