Kevin , 11 Salim Lakhani, Instructor

 

When a group of adolescents face more than 100 global teams in a scientific challenge, competition can be fierce. Does luck determine the champion team?  Not if you ask Kevin Reyes, an 11-year-old boy who was on the winning team.  Their team, the Extremophiles, depicted an extreme environment when the earth’s atmosphere was saturated with carbon dioxide (CO2).  To survive that environment and make that toxic air breathable, they devised equipment that separated the CO2 from oxygen using heat and centrifugal force.  “Our team through a lot of hard work, team work, focus and dedication took first place with great distinction earning our prize by 22 points ahead of our competition,” says Kevin.

October Staff Pick: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

 A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Grade/Kumon Level of book:  6^th-8^th Grade / Level G

Why do you personally enjoy this book?

A Wrinkle in Time is not just a fun fantasy adventure. I enjoyed seeing each character learn and grow from the adventures they experience throughout the book. Meg Murry starts off feeling inadequate in a family full of genius minds; gradually, she gains more confidence and realizes her own potential. It also explores Meg’s relationships with her brothers, her friendship with Calvin O’Keefe, as well as their interplanetary travel through tesseracts (a term that L’Engle invented to explain a concept similar to that of wormholes). The book also features Meg’s brother Charles Wallace Murry and his own journey alongside Meg and Calvin.

Motivating Your Children in 3 Simple Steps

Now that it’s October and the excitement of the new school year has worn off, some parents may be finding it difficult to keep their children motivated. By implementing these smart strategies at home, you can help keep your children as excited about the 40^th day of school as they were about the first.

Encouraging a Love of Reading

By encouraging a love of books early, parents can help their children develop inquisitive minds, full of purpose and imagination. The Kumon Reading Program aims to cultivate a high level of reading ability, while introducing a variety of literature to children. Through continual study and practice, children develop skills that lead to critical thinking.

Striving Towards Success at Your Own Pace

It should be no surprise that each child learns at his or her own pace. One of the major benefits of the Kumon Program is that children of all ages and abilities can benefit. Take Alik, a 14-year-old Kumon Student who was diagnosed as deaf at two months old. His perseverance led him to overcome challenges and complete the Kumon Reading Program in just two years. In the inspiring video below, he shares how the Kumon Program helped improve his math calculation abilities, broaden his vocabulary to new heights and declare his commitment to make future generations better.

Reading Aloud at an Early Age

Toru Kumon promoted the idea of children reading from as early an age as possible with the phrase, “reading before the age of three.” He stated, “Children can easily learn to read before the age of three if you have them listen to songs and read to them.”

The Kumon Reading Program begins at the preschool level by having children connect words to familiar objects. The assignments build incrementally, with each worksheet teaching a lesson that’s one small step more advanced than the lesson before, reducing the likelihood of students hitting a wall and becoming discouraged. To help encourage reading at an early age, Kumon parents can take advantage of resources like Kumon’s Recommended Reading List, which has a section dedicated to read-aloud books.

To Have and to Hold…a Pencil

The Kumon Program has recently added a new level that can help children become more enthusiastic about learning. Through the use of Kumon’s new Level Z, students learn how to hold and use a pencil and develop their pencil skills.

In an ever-growing digital world, are skills like handwriting becoming obsolete? Recent studies suggest that the answer is “no.” In a 2012 study, The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children, psychologists used functional MRIs to gauge the amount of brain activity triggered when children were shown letters and instructed to type the letter on a computer, trace it, or write it freehand on a blank piece of paper. Only the children who had drawn the letter freehand displayed increased neural activity when shown the letter again, implying comprehension and retention of the information.

Handwriting is an important part of completing the Kumon worksheets. For students to begin learning their letters and numbers and writing them correctly, proper pencil grip and a certain level of pencil skills are needed.  Level Z can help students develop pencil skills through the practice of scribbling and drawing lines, curves, and angles in a fun, colorful, and engaging way. In combination with other activities that advance motor skill development, Level Z will prepare students to write their letters and numbers for the first time with excitement and confidence.