Words are not only hard to pronounce and say, but also hard to spell. I have heard many times that the english language is one of the hardest to learn. So trying to teach that to your child can sometimes be tricky too, depending on their learning style, and the way your child hears the words.
My daughter is not a big fan of spelling. I have tried to sneakily teach her this by getting her to do more writing, but alas my daughter doesn't like writing either. She has already been through the school system from when she was 5 years old till she was 8 years old. And even then she was starting to have issues. Being kept in from play time to complete work she had no interest in doing.
Lucky for me I don't have to start teaching her right from the start, but I find she still has problems pronouncing and hearing the sounds that some letters make. The more I point it out, like the correct way to do it, the more she doesn't want to do it all. So I have had to step back a bit and just try and inspire her to want to spell, read and write.
She has done Reading Eggs online. But I found she didn't want me to sit with her as she is strongly independent. So then she tended to just rush through each stage. Lost interest and never progressed to Reading Express. I try to encourage her to read anything and everything, if it's something she is interested in. Whether it be instructions on how to put something together, recipes, words to her favorite songs etc.
So for today Miss Personality chose to do a word find out of a book I bought on the weekend. The words she had to find were to do with all the different kinds of animals you could have as a pet. Then as a part of the word find, she then had to put them into groups, depending on whether they were fish, mammals, birds or reptiles.
While she had lunch I thought it would be a perfect time for me to read a couple of books to her. One was on Taming The Sun - Four Maori Myths by Gavin Bishop. At first Miss Personality thought it would be boring, but could tell she was listening to every word :) As I was reading the book, if we came across a word in maori, I would ask Miss Personality if she knew what it meant, if not then I would explain it's meaning.
To try and inspire some reading, I have made a deal with Miss Personality. That for every book she reads or 8 pages out of a chapter book, I will pay her 20c for every book, at the end of the month. The only catch is that she has to write it down in her best writing the title and the author. Sneaky sneaky mummy :)
She read to me Mary Queen of Scots by Harriet Castor. Instead of sitting behind her pointing out when she had said a word wrong on missed a word. I let her just read it to me and ask me for help when she wanted it.
Have you ever used bribery to inspire some motivation in an area of learning that you know your child needs some more practice with ? If no, what are some other ways that you try to motivate your child/ children?
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