How You Can Help Your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Grade Child at Home

Daily Living

• Discuss and agree on ways to store games, books, and clothing so that your child can find things independently and put them away at home.
• Talk about the jobs that need to be done in the family and agree on how they will be handled.
• Make schedules together of when to do homework and when to play.
• Help your child invite friends from school to your home to play, for example, by initiating the phone call, if necessary.
• Talk about and develop rules that are important for your family to function, for example, about mealtimes or laundry responsibilities.
• Ask your child to help think of solutions when conflicts arise at home.

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Reading

• Read aloud to your child as often as possible, every day if you can. Enjoying books together does more to help your child become a good reader than anything else you can do.
• Set aside a time for your child to read aloud to you. Select books that are easy to read so your child can feel successful.
• Resist the urge to ask your child to sound out an unknown word every time he or she stumbles. Talk about what word might make sense based on the rest of the sentence, or skip the word altogether and come back to it later. If you noticed that your child read that same word on another page, find it together. Or just tell your child the word. After all, the most important thing is that reading together be a pleasant experience.
• Talk about the books you and your child have read--share what you like (or don't like), compare your opinions of the characters, or think about a time you did something similar to what you have read.
• Encourage your child to read the print that surrounds you in everyday life--signs, directions, labels, addresses, the telephone book, messages on television, and the newspaper.
• Write messages to your child--a brief note in the lunch box saying "I love you!" or "Have fun playing soccer at recess today."

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Writing

• Write letters and thank you notes together--begin by having your child dictate, later copy what you write, and then rewrite with your help.
• Make shopping lists together--group items by categories and have your child suggest ideas.
• When interesting or funny things happen, talk with your child about how you could write stories about these events--begin by saying the first line, have your child say the next, and keep alternating until you have finished the story.
• Put up a message board so family members can write messages to each other.
• Give your child a diary or a calendar with space to write a word or two about what happened each day.
• Invite your child to write captions for pictures in a family photo album.

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Mathematics

• Play games together--dice games, board games such as Monopoly, and card games.
• Plan aloud with your child before you go on errands. Ask, "What do we need to bring? "Where should we go first...next...last?"
• Talk about time: "It's half an hour (or 30 minutes) until dinner."
• Have a clock at home with numbers and hands (analog), not just digital. Then play games, closing your eyes, and seeing if you can predict when 10, or 30, or 60 seconds passes.
• Involve your child in shopping for groceries and handling small amounts of money.
• Give your child a personal calendar or create one on the computer--together mark down recent events and cross off the days.
• Encourage your child's interest in building with different kinds of blocks, or making things out of "junk."
• Record your child's height in inches and meters on a door, tape, or wall chart.
• Read the weather page together or watch the Weather Channel. Talk about the predictions and how much the temperature will change.

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Social Studies

• Talk about the jobs that each family member does at home: taking out the trash, doing the laundry, setting the table, washing dishes. Make a list together.
• Talk with your children about the work you do either outside the home or in it.
• Talk about your family history. Share family artifacts and look at family photographs. Make a family tree.
• Look at maps to see where relatives were born.
• Teach your children the language of your home culture.
• Explore the city, town, or community where you live. Make a scrapbook of the places you visit together.
• Find out what your child is studying in school. Think about ways you and your child can gather more information about the topic.
• Encourage family discussions about getting along with people. Talk about how you handle disagreements or problems with your friends, and encourage your child to talk about experiences at school.
• Read books and stories about people of different racial, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds and about people who lived long ago and in different parts of the world.
• Talk about your beliefs and values and how they influence your thoughts and actions.
  

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Science

• Encourage your child to collect and organize objects such as seeds, rocks, marbles, magnets, shells, and bottle caps. Provide a magnifying glass and encourage investigations. You could ask, "What do you notice?" "Which ones do you want to group together?"
• Talk about scientific events that occur in your home: which cereals get soggy, why the food in the back of the refrigerator develops mold, why some plants need to be watered more often than others. Formulate scientific theories with your child about these observations and test them together.
• Show your child that you are interested in science, too. Mix paints, weigh snow, study a rainbow, watch an anthill, predict the weather, and catch fireflies and let them go.
• Sometimes, rather than answering your child's science question, trigger an investigation by asking questions. "Why do you think...?" "What would happen if...?" "How could we find out?"
• Take your child to the library to borrow books and videos on many different science topics.

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Assessment

• Share with your child's teacher what you know about your child's interests, preferred learning styles, and specific needs.
• Talk with your child about the work he or she brings home. Ask questions such as:
  • What did you like best about this?
  • How do you feel you did on this assignment?
  • Would you do something different next time?
  • What was most difficult about this assignment?
  • How did you decide on the topic for this story?
• Model self-evaluation. For example, you might say, "Today was a good day at work. I actually accomplished six of the seven things on my list."
• Give your child specific feedback on projects and chores he or she does around the house. You might say:
  • "You certainly did a careful job cleaning your room. You put everything away."
  • "The Lego building you made is really interesting. I noticed that you spent a long time adding details."
• Acknowledge your child's progress as well as the possibility of further improvement. For example:
  • "Remember when you couldn't swim to the end of the pool? Now you can with no effort!"
  • "It's okay that you weren't able to read all the words on the page. You still figured out the main idea. Nobody learns everything all at once. Keep practicing."

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Homework

• Establish a place where your child can do homework. Most first and second graders are not yet able to go to their rooms or to do their homework in a place where they are alone.
• Make sure the materials your child will need--pencils, markers, crayons, paper, scissors, ruler--are available.
• Identify the best time for your child to do homework. Some children need a break when they come home before beginning to work; others like to do what they can immediately. (Most parents find that it is best not to leave homework (other than reading) to do just before bedtime. Six-to-eight year olds are just too tired by then.)
• If necessary, post a schedule that shows when homework is due and when your child will do it each day.
• Decide with your child about rules, such as "No TV during homework time."
• Monitor how much time your child spends on homework. (This doesn't include getting a snack, bouncing balls, or running around the room!) If your child is spending more than a reasonable time on homework each day, talk with the teacher.

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