Sounds familiar?  That's because at some point during our children's journey through school, we parents will experience the frustration of how our children have thrown away what appears to be easy-to-earn marks during their tests.

"Why so careless?!"  Most children are numb to our exasperated cry.  Our first instinct is to pounce on the seemingly obvious problem - that the children were simply not concentrating on their work, and were distracted, day-dreaming, or simply want to rush through the work to get it done so that they can spend more time with things they like. 

As a student, I hated homework because I would rather spend time reading my story books.  As a parent, I hated homework because I would end up yelling at my child who would rather spend time reading his story books.  As a teacher, I hated homework because I have to mark hastily completed assignments by students who would rather spend time reading their story books.

At some point of their school lives, most children will forget to do some assignments, lose homework, and make careless mistakes.  Some will be confused or overwhelmed, and need more help with completing assignments than others.  Others may not be able to complete their classwork in school and so have to bring it home, adding to their pile of homework.

You may find that there are some words which cannot be sounded out using phonics rules (eg 'one') or which, by itself, cannot be easily explained to a child (eg 'is', 'to''). Such words form part of the 'Sight Words' list or commonly known as the 'Dolch Word List' and mastering them may enable a child to read more efficiently as the words in the list is said to make up 50-75% of all words used in books.

An example of the Dolch Word List can be found in this website.

Here is what I did with my then-5yr-old boy:

This set of cards introduces frequently used musical symbols. The symbols covered include the staff, notes such as semibreve, minim, dotted minim, crochet, quaver, semiquaver, treble clef and bass clef, flat and sharp.

Teaching a child to read independently is the most important life skill that you can teach him.

Learning phonics is the first step to reading. Most parents will send their kids to phonics enrichment classes. However, even if you pay money to send to such classes, the teachers will still tell you that you must practice with your child at home. 

I have been teaching my boy phonics at home for about 8 months.  I am a full time working mummy,  and I can only afford to teach him about 15 minutes a day.  Checkout my blog about my method of teaching, as well as the teaching materials.

http://tamarindphonics.blogspot.com/

Relax lah... no need to be so kiasu.  New Singaporean parents tend to think that planning for Primary One Registration years in advance is just plain uncool.  Some even believe that as long as they are staying near the school, there is no reason why they would not be able to place their children in that school.

Perhaps the following facts would help put things in perspective:

The objective of this set of cards is to introduce the child to Great Paintings from various eras. This set covers paintings from both Western and Eastern artist and are arrange according to the approximate date the paintings were created.