How To Teach: Early Active Language Skills Crucial For Life
By Mimi Rothschild
Good communication is impossible without good language skills. A child who learns language and communication skills at an early age will have a clear edge later on in homeschool, college, and career. A parent need not wait for formal homeschool or the kindergarten classroom to teach their child all sorts of language skills. In fact, language skills can be effectively taught to many children at the very young age of two or three. It is not necessary to formalize these “lessons” into a true homeschool program. To put it another way, the focus should be on how language skills, i.e. interpretive speech, reading, are fun activities. In other words, even though these activities may be “homeschool” in your mind, as far as the child should be concerned it is play.
Before notions of homeschool even dawn on a child they will (or should) have encountered books, and many of them. As a young child becomes intimately familiar with a particular book or books through having it read to them countless times, they will eventually be able to recite the words back. While this is not actual reading, it is interpretive speech and will give the child the sensation of reading. It will also give greater confidence when reading really does become part of the “homeschool” curriculum.
Most children on the homeschool track will begin and hone their reading skills between four and seven years of age. For those parents who wish to provide a religious education, homeschool can easily include simple Bible passages at this point. Of course, early homeschool literature should capture the imagination, and while Bible passages can certainly do this, there are many popular children's authors such as Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss who will not only make the first few years of homeschool fun, but who provide a wealth of easy-to-memorize pieces. Ultimately, whatever material the student and chooses to adapt for interpretive performance should reflect their level of skill and particular interests.
Memorizing a piece of literature and performing it is a worthwhile homeschool activity. Through this process of memorization, interpretation, and performance, the student will gain intimate knowledge of the piece. This ability to delve into the details of any literary work, including the Bible, will stay with and benefit them throughout the remainder of their homeschool studies. Interpretation and performance demands the homeschool student develop active reading, speaking, and listening, skills, as opposed to a more passive and less reflective manner of reading and communication that one encounters among many classroom-taught students.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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