Category: Education

Kids have always been very receptive to new information, and it’s our job as parents and guardians to help our kids grow by exposing them to quality resources of information.  Of course, it’s a challenge to provide a healthy dose of online freedom to explore, with sufficient online safety measures in place.

When striking a balance between entertainment and learning, or a combination of both, there are a number resources available.  In the streaming world Netflix is great, at times. There is also the Netflix Kids option. Social media platforms are far more vast and difficult to keep track of.  You may even wonder if TikTok is safe.

However, after doing extensive research, we’ve narrowed it down to five of the best online resources created especially to help your child grow.  You can Google these resources in the search bar at the top of our website.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a free online learning platform. It provides free programs for children aged four to 18, as well as tools for instructors working from home and parents who choose to educate their children during this period. They even have a timetable to keep kids on track when they’re at home.

Apart from education, safety is also a top priority, especially when kids and teens have access to a wide variety of information. By following a few safety tips for students, you’ll be able to help them navigate the resources better.

CK-12

CK-12 is another excellent education site, with courses ranging from math, English, and science to philosophy and astronomy, among other topics. Run by an NGO, CK-12 uses digital textbooks or “Flexbooks” to diversify K-12 education across the world.

Even teachers and subject matter experts can contribute and use CK-12 resources to create holistic workbooks and models. It also includes some information for university students, but the site is primarily for individuals under the age of 18.

The Adventures of Mo

 As a free, online resource, The Adventures of Mo helps parents, teachers, and homeschoolers engage kids in US geography. Read fun state blogs, trivia or an adventure eBook that can be played as a game. Kids earn $10 if they submit geography trivia that’s posted online. The website also features brief videos of kids sharing information about US states. Guided imagery presentations via zoom are available for a fee. www.adventuresofmo.com

Kanopy

Kanopy is a service that works with libraries to provide online access to movies and TV episodes. For older kids, there are documentaries, docuseries, and film festival selections, as well as a Kanopy Kids area with animated storybooks, Sesame Street, and more.

Kanopy has a monthly limit on how many videos you can watch. You’ll need to sign up for their services with your library card to access their catalog.

Sesame Street

SesameStreet.org is a website dedicated to Sesame Street, the popular children’s television show. It’s ideal for little children at home. The parental controls are extensive, allowing you to lock the user onto the site to prevent your children from exploring the internet, as well as track what your child has been viewing. You may also build activity playlists and let your child loose on them.

DIY.org

DIY.org is devoted to assisting children in learning how to do something by themselves. The DIY sessions develop a holistic understanding of physical objects and improve the logical reasoning of children. The website offers a variety of lessons, including photography, painting, science, and cuisine

Adult and child sign-ins are distinct, and parents can follow their children’s progress through email notifications. It offers a 14-day free trial before switching to a monthly subscription.

Online Guidance

Due to the wide availability of information these days, it’s important to guide our kids through it, point them in the right direction, and keep them safe. These five online resources should help them cultivate a learning mentality and understand the world in a better way.

Teachers, explore these online class productivity tips.

Learning how to write cursive is a fantastic skill you can teach your children! In the age of computers, handwriting seems like a thing of the past. However, there are still many benefits as to why your kid should learn to write in cursive. In this blog, we’ll help you teach your kids cursive and know more about its perks.

Why should you teach your kids how to write cursive?

Cursive writing is more than a life skill of being able to form beautiful letters across the paper. It allows your child to express his uniqueness and creativity through writing. This type of writing can help your kid in the long run. Here are some benefits of cursive writing that your kids can enjoy:

Cursive helps improve your kid’s motor skills

Writing in cursive uses a lot of hand-eye coordination. Like sports, the writing movements cause your kid’s brain to create new connections, allowing them to hone their motor skills and overall developmental growth.

Cursive writing is good for your child’s brain

This form of writing engages the brain of your child more than we know. Research shows that cursive activates regions of the brain responsible for thinking, language, and memory.

This form of brain exercise improves cognitive health and development. Studies also show that kids who know cursive perform better on reading and spelling tests. You can also try activities such as literacy crafts to complement all the brain activity your kid is experiencing due to cursive writing.

Cursive forms discipline and helps with your kid’s self-esteem

Learning how to write in cursive takes time and effort. With constant practice, your kid takes the lead in improving their writing skills and instills self-discipline. As your child gets closer to mastering cursive, giving them praise for their progress boosts their self-esteem.

How to teach your child cursive writing?

Teaching your child how to write cursive may seem like a daunting task. With these steps, we’ll help you teach your kid to learn cursive.

Start from scratch

Remember that cursive writing may seem completely different and new to your kid. Your child has to learn to read and write the whole alphabet once again using his alphabet recognition skills. It is essential to guide them every step of the way.

Teach proper form of writing

Depending on what type of cursive you are teaching, it is important to have an appropriate posture for writing. Make sure that your kid’s hand, paper, and pen are all placed appropriately.

The standard angle to slant paper when writing cursive is somewhere between 30-40 degrees. Right-handed children slant their paper to the left, while left-handed kids have theirs tilted to the right.

Neatness is not the priority

Don’t focus too much on making sure that your kid’s handwriting is prim and proper. Let your child get the hang of the hand movements needed in cursive writing. It is more important for your child to develop proper muscle memory in writing cursive. Their neatness can always be improved later on.

Practice leads to better cursive writing

Learning cursive can be very hard work! Don’t expect your kid to master cursive all of a sudden. It takes a lot of mental and motor skills to develop handwriting. Set up regular practice sessions for writing cursive and celebrate his steady improvements instead.

Teach the letters individually and together

Start with lowercase letters before your progress into uppercase. Your child will find connecting lowercase letters easier and helps him get used to connecting letters together in a flowing way. It also helps to teach your kid cursive letters grouped by similar hand motions.

Write with your child

Show your child how to write each letter when teaching him cursive. It is easier for him to learn and remember how to form the letters if you guide him through it. Try explaining to him each step needed to form the letters. Remember to use a calm voice when doing so.

Don’t be afraid to write long words

Once your kid can write each alphabet letter, teach him how to write words together. Over time, move on to sentences and even paragraphs in cursive.

Read how you can help your kids with their book reports.

Music is one of the most rewarding things you can teach anyone, no matter how old they are. However, teaching kids can be daunting since they need more time and effort to grasp new concepts. But there are unique things you can do to increase the productivity of music classes for kids.

The main thing is make the music classes as enjoyable as possible. This is especially when teaching kids music online where there are lots of potential distractors.

In this article, you’ll learn some of the best ways to make music classes enjoyable for learners so that every child can achieve their greatest potential.

1. Keep the Lessons Short

A kid’s attention span is shorter than that of an adult. This makes it vital to keep your lessons as short as possible. Otherwise, your students are likely to get distracted, especially if it is an online class. Thus, the best thing to do is design the length of the classes with the kid’s age in mind.

An average length of time when teaching kids should be between 30-45 minutes. Please make the most of this time with exciting activities that will keep them glued to the lesson. It will also help develop new experiences that would grab the learners’ attention for every lesson.

2. Use Technology

Almost everything that kids know today relates to technology in some way. So, it will be best to bring about things that they can relate to in the classroom. The reality is that music is one of the best subjects where you can run out of options on how to use different technologies.

You can use video sites and applications to make learning more practical. The best thing about using such platforms is that they are filled with a wide range of content. Thus, you can even recommend them for practice at home, especially for kids learning to play musical instruments.

3. Be Aware of Differing Skill Levels

Music is an art, and the skill levels differ from an individual to another. Kids, too, have different skill levels be it in singing or playing musical instruments. That explains why schools that provide online music classes have different learning levels. These levels range from beginner to intermediate and advanced.

Music schools that music classes for kids recognize that some kids need more time to grasp ideas. You, too, need to recognize this fact if you want to become a music teacher. It will help you meet every kid’s learning needs and enhance your music classes’ productivity.

4. Encourage Interaction

Another way to make teaching music enjoyable is to encourage kids to learn from each other. A kid’s best teacher is their peer, and kids enjoy sharing knowledge with others. It would be best to put them in groups to encourage peer collaboration.

This will break the monotony of kids listening to you all the time. Besides, a problematic concept sounds easier when explained to by a fellow kid. Interactive learning will also allow the kids to work in groups and eventually improve their teamwork skills. This is how they also learn to sing or play instruments harmoniously.

5. Have a Positive Attitude

Preparing for a lesson is one of the most tedious tasks teachers have to do. It is even more daunting and requires more time than teaching the lesson in class. Sometimes, this can take a toll on you as a music teacher. However, you need to avoid showing your learners this feeling once you’re in class.

Kids can scan moods, and they will pick on your mood as soon as they read it. This makes it vital to stay positive and show excitement even if the overwhelming preparation had dampened your spirit before the lesson. Staying positive throughout can help make the learning process more effective.

6. Teach Things Kids Relate to Easily

Kids aren’t good at grabbing new concepts that they don’t have any interest in, especially music. It is vital to avoid this type of music content, genres and songs to make your music classes enjoyable. The first thing to do is identify the songs and music genres that the kids in your class loveto relate with best.

It would be best if you then used this music and genre to make learning enjoyable. This also includes musical instruments that they enjoy playing or listening to when played to them. The good thing is that you can never run short of music or instruments to fit the learners’ needs and interests.

Also considering teaching kids about the music industry in case they decide that they want to be a professional musician someday.

7. Introduce Friendly Competition

Competition makes us work harder at work, in business or anywhere else. Introducing friendly competition in your music class can encourage learners to work extra hard. For instance, you can introduce games that kids will enjoy and give prices to those that come out top.

The best way to do this is to avoid making it an individual-to-individual competition. You can divide the class into two teams. Then, make the teams compete against each other. This will ensure that the kids don’t feel embarrassed as individuals if they lose. This will encourage them to work harder as a team.

Conclusion

Learning music is a beautiful way through which kids can mature up quickly. Besides being a talent, it is an art and skill that they can keep growing from a young age into teenage and adulthood. But then, it all starts with attending music school and developing their talents into invaluable skills for the future.

However, teaching music lessons can be a daunting task for music teachers. Even with proper planning, presenting the lesson interestingly isn’t as easy as it may seem. The good news is that there are several ways that teachers can grab the learners’ attention and deliver their lessons more effectively.

This article has explored some of the things you can do to achieve this as a music teacher. These tips can help you relate better with kids and also increase their ability to grab musical concepts. Take your time to implement these tips to increase your productivity in the classroom or online.

School is pretty much a job that we give to kids.  Like the jobs we have as adults it is the place you must show up to every day, even when you don’t want to go.  The business of learning is work.  It involves mental focus and self-discipline.  That discipline is an important part of how school shapes kids.

The important knowledge and skills that classes such as math, science, history, languages, and English are critical to helping children become well-rounded, intelligent adults but the self-discipline it takes to show up every day, work with others and finish the assigned work might be the most important skill school can instill in us.

The work that kids must put into school and the social anxiety that can come from learning how to interact with other people every day should make it easy to understand why many kids struggle with school.  School can be an unpleasant experience for kids with learning disabilities, kids who have a conflict with teachers, kids who have social anxiety, kids who are bullied, and kids who struggle with the self-discipline you need to be a good student.  Some people simply don’t like school, and some even go as far as being scared to death of going to school (known as Didaskaleinophobia).

So, if school has the potential to be such an unpleasant experience, why do some kids love school so much?  We all went to school with some classmates who were full of enthusiasm and clearly enjoyed their classes.  What can we do to encourage any child to have a positive experience in school and have a huge smile on their face when they step foot into school?  It is possible to make school a place that even kids who were less than excited about going to school come to love.  We explore five ways to make sure kids love school.

1. Make learning interactive and creative.

Different kids have different learning styles.  Some kids can do well with traditional learning.  Some kids adapt to a classroom situation on their first day of school.  They can listen to a lecture, take notes, read textbooks and study, and earn good grades on quizzes and test.  That simply isn’t the case with many kids.  For them, learning needs to be an active, creative process.  They need to be presented with choices in how they will approach learning and they need to be up from their desks and engaged in learning activities.  Even students who do well with traditional teaching methods benefit from this approach.  An engaged student who is empowered to make choices is far more likely to love school.

2. Adults should be role models.

Kids look to adults to model how to behave.  Attitude is contagious!  Every day children are essentially at the mercy of adults.  They must listen to their parents, teachers, coaches, instructors, principals, guidance councilors and other adults.  It is important for kids to be taught respect for adults, but it is also import for adults who are parents or work with kids to remember how much their own attitude affect the kids they are in contact with every day.  If their teachers and the other adults enjoy being at school there then so will the kids.

3. Adults are not the only ones who need work/life balance.

When you become an adult, it can be easy to envy kids their freedom.  With the pressures of bills, work, and parenting it can seem like kids have it easy by comparison.  Today, kids are under a lot of pressure to make good grades, be involved in multiple extracurricular activities and deal with the social pressures of school, which have only become more intense thanks to social media.  In order for them to love school, they need help balancing their schedule.  It is important for them to figure out how to manage their schoolwork, extracurricular activities and free time without becoming over scheduled and stressed out.  With a healthy work/life balance, they will be able to love school.

4. Help kids identify their interests and strengths.

Part of growing up is figuring who you are, what your interests are and what direction you want your life to go in.  That is a tall order!  Kids need room to experiment with different classes and different extracurricular activities.  Some they may quickly give up on.  Others may radically shape who they become and what they do with their life.  Their parents, teachers and the other adults around them should support this process.

5. Foster an environment that is supportive of all kids.

There is a growing awareness of the effect that school bullying and the toxic morass of the online world has on children and their development.  It is crucial for schools to actively promote a school environment that encourages kids who are struggling socially and experiencing bullying to seek help.  It is also crucial for that help to be available.  Too often children who tried to get help were dismissed and bullying was seen as normal childhood behavior.  For kids to love school it needs to be a place they feel safe, respected and listened to.  It also needs to be a place they can develop healthy friendships that enrich their lives.

Preparing Kids for School

The earlier kids are exposed to these these important strategies the better.  This includes making sure children and are socially and mentally ready as early as kindergarten.  Of course, creating beneficial learning experiences for kids as they move through the grades is a process that continually evolves.  Children are resilient and will respond to positive reinforcement at any age to assist them in being better students that want to be in school and learn.