Through the Kumon Math Program, for example, you can introduce your children to math topics before they study them in the classroom, thereby giving your children an academic edge in their coursework. In fact, many of our students love being above grade level in math. Daniel, a fourth grade Kumon Student from Colorado said, “I am most proud of the fact that I am doing fractions when my class is still doing multiplication.”

The extra math practice that Kumon provides will also help to reinforce previous topics, while introducing new ones.  Practice inside and outside of the classroom can lead to a mastery of topics from addition and subtraction to algebra and calculus.

Outside of Kumon, you can help your children practice math through everyday tasks such as shopping, baking, and reading the time. When you are at the grocery store, for example, ask your children to help figure  out the price of two boxes of their favorite cereal or the price difference between two brands of milk. Not only can these activities help reinforce math practice outside of the classroom, but they can also build your children’s confidence and help them realize how much math is used in everyday situations.

In addition, when playing fun games and activities like Scrabble and Monopoly, you can encourage your children to give their math skills a boost. Monopoly, for example, is an excellent opportunity for your children to practice budget management and probability calculations. Scrabble helps them practice basic arithmetic as well as multiplication. These games, and others (like Yahtzee and Tangram), can help your children practice their math facts while having fun at the same time.

What are some additional ways you and your children practice math outside of the classroom?

Teaching your children to show appreciation to others is no problem when you break it down into easy steps they can follow. Here’s a simple way for you to teach your children the skill of showing appreciation. Tell them to do the following:

• Look at the person while speaking to them.
• Use a pleasant, sincere tone of voice.
• Say “Thank you for …” and specifically describe what the person did for them that they appreciated.

“Thank you for teaching me how to learn new math concepts on my own.”

• Give a reason why it was so beneficial.

“I am happy I can now help my friends with their math work.”

• Offer to help or do a favor for that person in the future.

“Can I help hand out our math homework?”

Creating strong ties between your family, community and children’s school, helps keep your children aware of what is important in life. Parents bear the responsibility of developing and providing guidance on how to maintain these healthy relationships. Showing appreciation is one way to strengthen relationships with teachers, friends, and family.

May 6 is the official start to Teacher Appreciation Week. This is a great time to help demonstrate the importance of showing gratitude to your children’s school teacher, and their Kumon Instructor. Remember, any way that you show you appreciate them will be well received. A simple “thank you” goes a long way with your children’s educators.

Partnering with your children’s teacher and/or instructor is the best way to ensure their educational success. An enormous amount of hard work goes into educating children, and oftentimes the resources are limited. Having a wonderful teacher and/or instructor is truly a gift that can leave a lasting impression on children.

Research by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory found that strong family-school connections can produce significant benefits for children. These include:

• Higher grade point averages
• Better attendance
• Enrollment in more challenging courses
• Strong social skills
• Improved behavior at home and at school

When children are infants and toddlers, their brains are like sponges. This is the ideal time to instill the importance of getting involved in activities within your community: the younger your children, the better. Children can grow and flourish in a home with the interaction of a loving family that provides safety, active involvement, exploration, discovery, and self-learning.

Parents can also help their children learn important values by joining their children on their academic journey. School is more than the place children go to learn about math formulas and famous novels. It’s a place and time to build character, confidence and social skills. Children get this opportunity only once in their life, and it’s important for parents to help nurture it.

Finding time to get involved in your children’s school activities can be difficult. However, it is necessary to create strong ties with your children’s school. There are many different opportunities to get involved in your children’s school community. For example:

• Join the PTA/PTO. Don’t worry about attending all of the meetings or events. Simply being a member shows the school you care.
• Volunteer to assist at school events like plays, plant sales, and career days. If time is a problem, offer to do something like design and print fliers.
• Help out with the school newsletter. It’s a great way to know what’s going on.
• Volunteer to help out with class trips. If you can’t go, maybe offer to make a photo collage of the trip from submitted pictures.

Above all, remember to let your children enjoy the whole experience. Make sure they acknowledge your involvement with their school as a positive factor in their lives. Include your children in the decision-making process for the choices you consider.

If your children have been fostered with appropriate family-school experiences, they’ll likely fit into any community they choose. They’ll know how to contribute to the community, benefit from the interaction, and pass on those values to their own children.

Stress can also raise their risk for insomnia, skin disorders, headaches, upset stomach, and depression according to Paul Rosch, MD, president of the American Institute of Stress. Fortunately, there are a few ways to help your children keep their stress levels down:

• Deep Breathing

Studies have shown that meditation and deep breathing can lift moods and decrease blood pressure. Children who are old enough to count up to four can practice a controlled breathing exercise. When your children are feeling stressed, tell them stop whatever they are doing, sit down, and concentrate on breathing. Have them slowly count up to four as they breathe in and out for several minutes as the stress starts to fade away.

• Exercise

A recent study from the University of Helsinki found that children who were engaged in more physical activities on a regular basis also had lower levels of stress reactivity. In order to reduce your children’s stress, make sure they are engaged in regular physical activity from organized sports, playing with friends outside, or even walking for twenty minutes each day.

• Work in Small Steps

If your children are feeling anxious about a school project, encourage them to break the assignment into small steps with due dates on the completion of each specific mini-task. For example, if your children are worried about a book report and has two weeks to complete the assignment, advise them to take five days to read the book, four days to write the first draft, and the remaining time to revise.

• Talk About It

If you expect a stressful situation to arise or if your children become increasingly stressed about school, it’s important to take the time talk to your children about the situation. Not only can this help to relieve any stress that they may be feeling, but it can also encourage your children to become more forthcoming about situations where they are stressed in the future.

What are some additional activities you can do with your children to help reduce stress?

• Art

According to a study by Kenneth A. Wesson, renowned Education Consultant and Neuroscientist, fine arts, such as painting, drawing, and sculpting  not only help develop brain function and special reasoning skills, but can also help children improve fine motor skills. “Exciting new research consistently indicates a strong correlation between the arts, cognitive development and academic success,” says Kenneth Wesson. For example, if a child can illustrate a particular object or being, then the child is able to process it on a symbolic level and even communicate it. So, whether your children use a crayon, pencil, or paintbrush, be sure to encourage their creative development through art.

• Outdoor activities

According to research from the University of Illinois at Ubana-Champaign, spending time outside can boost your child’s brain function, especially areas regarding attention, concentration, and memory. This study found that when children took a twenty minute walk outside, their attention and concentration were enhanced on tests that involve repeating a series of numbers backward. Encourage your children to spend fifteen to twenty minutes a day outside by moving story or homework time to the park or your backyard.

• Sports

Activities like baseball, soccer, and basketball are not only fun activities for children to participate in, but they can also have many positive effects on your children’s development. Aside from the physical benefits of regular exercise, sports can help your children increase their self-confidence as well as encourage regular, if not daily, practice of their activities.

• Music

A six month study conducted in France showed that musical training had increased reading and verbal comprehension among children who previously never had any musical experience. In addition, the research also showed that the musical training had also encouraged the development of neural processes as reflected in specific patterns of brain waves.

• Board Games

Games such as Monopoly and Scrabble may seem to be trivial, but as we mentioned in our previous blog posts, these seemingly simple games can help your children practice their math and reading skills. In addition, games that force your children to think strategically or use their reasoning skills help your children’s brain forge new neuronal connections.

• Academic Enrichment

One great way to transition your children from the school year to the summer months is by enrolling them in an academic enrichment program like Kumon. With only 30 minutes a day improving math and reading skills, your children will be able to enjoy all the summer fun while also continuing to advance their academic skills.

What are some additional extracurricular activities that your children would like to participate in?

• Confidence

When your children are confident in their abilities, they can accomplish anything they set their minds to achieve. Building confidence in your children is as simple as providing encouragement and celebrating their achievements. One long-term solution to equipping your children with confidence is to enroll them in the Kumon Math and Reading Program. As your children progress through each Kumon level, they will not only be practicing their math and reading skills, but will also be working to build their self-esteem and confidence in order to achieve their goals.

• Effort

How successful you are is often determined by how much energy you put into any given task. The effort your children put into completing an assignment can determine whether or not they are rewarded with academic accomplishments. Through the Kumon Method’s daily math and reading exercises, your children will be working towards achieving academic goals, getting closer with each Kumon worksheet that they complete.

• Initiative

By allowing your children to make decisions about their education, you are helping them actively participate in their academic successes and encourage them to explore topics that interest them. Your children will be given the tools and confidence they need to succeed through their focus of independent learning

• Perseverance

It is common to want to give up when things become challenging. However, the ability to work through difficulties often results in building character and achieving goals.  Kumon students learn to persevere through daily practice of assignments designed with incremental levels of difficulty. Children move forward in the levels based on their own abilities in math and reading.

• Problem-solving

When your children use their critical thinking skills to analyze a math problem or to build conclusions based on a given text, they are practicing the skills that they will need to apply in the future.  As your children progress though the Kumon Math and Reading Programs, each problem and worksheet they complete helps practice their abilities to quickly and accurately solve increasingly difficult problems.

There is no single route to achieving success. However, by making sure your children have these five essential skills, you are helping your children build the foundation for a successful future.

National Assessment of Educational Progress attributes this phenomenon to less rigorous coursework in classrooms. Its analysis of high school level textbooks showed that, in some Algebra I classes, more than sixty percent of the materials covered are elementary and middle school math topics, such as basic arithmetic and pre-algebra problems.

Although you may not have control over the specific coursework assigned in your children’s math classrooms, you can ensure that your children have built the foundation for the coursework that they will need for advanced high school and college-level math classes. The Kumon Math program uses assignments that progress in small steps to build critical skills needed to study high school-level calculus, which, as a study by the Trends in International Math and Science Study suggests, is an excellent way to prepare students for college-level math.

In addition, make sure that your children take math courses throughout all four years of high school to ensure they are prepared for the rigorous coursework of college-level math. Professor W. Stephen Wilson, former senior advisor for U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and calculus professor at John Hopkins University, states that a gap year in mathematics will “make taking whatever math they have to take in college extremely difficult.” Gap years in math could also result in difficulty in passing college placement exams in mathematics, resulting in remedial math coursework in college.

For more information on how the Kumon Math program can help build the foundation to help your children prepare for college, visit www.kumon.com.

Teaching your children how to live a healthy, environmentally responsible life at a young age will increase their chances of continuing eco-friendly living habits as adults. Here are some helpful tips to implement with your family at home:

Recycle Sort

Preschoolers and children in early elementary grades can practice categorizing as they learn to sort items by plastic or paper at home. Make recycling materials a fun activity instead of a chore by using colorful bins for each item. Children earn points as they sort paper and plastic recyclables into the color-coded bins. Children can redeem their points for special treats like a movie night or a trip to a local children’s museum.

Seasonal Shopping

Teach your children to help the environment and their bodies by choosing seasonal fruits and vegetables for meals and snacks. Use this illustrated interactive map of seasonal foods to create a list of produce available during each season. While you shop, let your children carry their list and pick out which fruits and vegetables they want to eat that week. Use child-friendly language to remind your children that eating seasonal items saves resources needed to transport non-seasonal produce from other regions.

Water Conservation

Show young children the difference between water flowing at full-strength and half-strength from a faucet. Help your children learn how to turn on a pencil-size stream of water and show them how a smaller stream works for washing his hands and rinsing dishes.

As your children get older, teach them to turn off the water while they brush their teeth. Many people let the water run while they brush, which wastes water. Run the water to wet your tooth brush, and then brush with the water off.

Reusable Products

Older children can repurpose old products into usable items, saving money and reducing their carbon footprint. Show your children how to make school notebooks from their favorite cereal boxes. First, cut off the front or back of a cereal box. Next, place two cardboard cereal box pieces together, punch three holes along one side. Finally insert notebook paper inside and secure with three small, metal snap-rings.

As the world becomes increasingly concerned with the environmental impact of our actions, children want to know where they fit in. Get your children involved in the green movement and make it a project in which everyone can participate.

• Vocabulary

One of the critical aspects of Scrabble play is building words in order to score the highest possible points. When you play Scrabble with your children, you are helping them expand their vocabulary, as well as practice spelling and reading. Keep a dictionary handy and have your children look up the words that they do not know the definition of and have them try to use that new word in a sentence.

• Critical Thinking

Although an extensive vocabulary can help give Scrabble players an edge, tile placement and word selection are just as important. For example, the word “burger” is only worth 8 points, but it could be worth 24 points if placed on top of a triple word score with the potential for more points.. Your children’s strategy and critical thinking skills can play an important role in maximizing their overall score. Encourage your children to pay attention to tile placement in addition to word selection, in order to maximize the amount of points each of their words can create.

• Math Practice

Scrabble can help your children practice addition and multiplication. Since each letter in the game has a point value, and many spaces on the board can either double or triple your words, Scrabble presents your children with an excellent opportunity to practice math. Be sure that your children have all of the tools that they need to complete their calculations.

What are some additional benefits of playing Scrabble with your children?

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

When a little boy plants a carrot seed, everyone tells him it won’t grow. But when you are very young, there are some things that you just know, and the little boy knows that one day a carrot will come up. So he waters his seed, and pulls the weeds, and he waits …Recommended Reading List – 7A

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

“Once there was a tree…and she loved a little boy.” So begins this tender story about the capacity for unconditional love and generosity. This is a tender story, touched with sadness, warmth and comfort. It is a moving parable for readers of all ages that presents an affecting illustration of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another’s capacity to love in return. Recommended Reading List – 2A

A Tree Is Nice by Janice May Udry

There are many reasons why trees are nice. You can pick apples from a tree or get shade from it. You can hang a basket of flowers on it or play pirate ship on it. Whatever the reasons for trees being nice, perhaps, the most endearing is that you don’t really need more than one tree to be happy. Recommended Reading List – AI

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

The Lorax is the story of a boy who is looking for answers. Living in a polluted town, the little boy wants to know the story of the Lorax, so he goes to the Once-ler, an elderly inventor. The Once-ler tells the boy how the town came to be ruined and, most importantly, what he can do to turn things around.

Help your children learn how they can make a difference in the environment, by introducing eco-friendly reading choices. These titles are perfect for children who are learning to live a green life.