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Archive for April 17, 2008

10 Ways To Help Your Child Be Successful In School

If you’re like me, it is very important to you that your children do well in school and get a good education. With that in mind, I’ve made a list of 10 ways you can help your child be successful in school.

1. Read Read Read. Read to your children, and when they are old enough have them read to you. I cannot stress this enough.

2. Promote good study habits. Give your child(ren) a quiet place to study or read with no distractions.

3. Have them do their homework as soon as they get home from school. If you let them play and/or go off with their friends, chances are you’ll forget about it until it’s late and by then they’ll claim to be too tired.

4. Make learning fun!!! Do fun little projects with your child(ren). I’ve listed a few here, and I have tons of others that I’ll be listing up periodically.

5. Study with your kids. Go over their spelling words before a big test, help them with their math facts by making home-made flash cards.

6. Get involved. Talk to his or her teachers. Find out their strong points and weaknesses. Work with them on things that their teachers seem to think they may need a little extra help with.

7. Go to school functions. You don’t have to go to all of them. But at least show your kiddo that you care about his school and the things he does there. Musicals, Family fun nights, stuff like that.

8. Talk to your child about his or her school day. I do this with my son, everyday. When he comes home I ask him how his day was, what he learned, if anything interesting happened. Just show that you are interested.

9. Make sure your child eats a good, healthy breakfast. Children will get distracted by hunger if they haven’t had enough to eat in the morning. Whether it be at home or at school, make sure your child eats breakfast. I cannot stress this enough.

10. Praise your child. Even if he or she isn’t doing overly well. As long as they try, praise them. Try not to show too much disappointment, but talk to your child about his or her grades and what he or she thinks would help them get better grades. I also reward my child when he gets good conduct grades. Good conduct goes hand in hand with a good education.

Parents, don’t forget: No one is perfect. All children learn differently and some may need more help than others. If you do your part to help your child achieve success in school, he or she will do theirs too. I am by no means a professional, but I will tell you that my son is 8 years old and currently reads on a college level, he is in the gifted and talented program, and has had to have his curriculum modified at school to keep him challenged.

Got any ideas of your own that you’d like to share? Comment or email me. I’d love to hear them. :)

Filed under School

Commenters: Jen, Julie, sara


To Buy or Not to Buy

Not too long ago my son’s computer was fried in a freak lightning storm. In my absent mindedness I had forgotten to pick up another surge protector from the store after I set up his computer when we moved here. Stupid, I know. I had been meaning to get it, and just forgot. So we bid goodbye to his crappy hand-me-down emachines computer. Thus began the search for a good, moderately priced desktop pc. I was considering a laptop for him for a short time, but I think he’s not old (responsible) enough to have the freedom of carrying his computer from room to room just yet. The boyfriend and I found this refurbished Acer on Buy.Com and that totally didn’t work out. You can read about that here if you like. After that incident, and him getting in some trouble, I decided to put off getting him a new computer until I felt he was a bit more deserving of such an expensive item. I realize though, that he actually does need a computer of his own. This week he had a project due and he needed to use my computer to do some research and also print off some images. I don’t like.. have anything overly bad on my computer, but there are some things I’d rather him not be going through. Also, my search filters needed to be adjusted as well as my internet permissions. I should just make him his own user account on here, but the problem with that is when he has his own account he thinks he can just use my computer any old time. So at this point, I”m undecided about whether or not I want to get him a new computer now or just wait. Hmph.

Filed under The Daily

Commenters: Becca, Julie