Need advice on educational electronics for early education
- Thread starter BWRhasnoAC
- Start date
West Des Moines Schools uses Chromebooks. You can get one new for like $175.
I know people that have liked ABCmouse. You can run it on most any computer or tablet.
Depending on her age and how she's been doing (a little behind vs quite a bit behind where they want her to be) I wouldn't be afraid of her repeating Kindergarten. For a lot of kids being on the older end of a grade makes a world of difference vs being in the middle or on the younger end. The problem is its kind of hard to tell when they are 5 if its just a slow start that changes 'once the flip switches' or if it will kind of always be a battle keeping up (socially, physically, and/or scholastically).
Ya she's 6 and very not ok with repeating. My father was a special ed teacher but retired now. He recommended they hold her back last year but here we are. It's too early like you said to know if she's special Ed.
It's not necessarily too early. My wife is a Pre-K teacher and director at our church preschool. She has Heartland AEA come in and do assessments on kids all the time to see if they need a specialized learning program or other assistance.
Hard to say with my niece. She's clever but not doing well with reading and math. Her mother has a lot of problems and isn't in the picture. Hard to know if it's an actual learning disability or socially influenced. We're just looking to give her something fun and educational to help.
An assessment from trained professionals can help make that determination is all I'm suggesting. They may also give you some recommendations for some fun learning tools as well. Might be worth looking into.
Nothing like "quality time" with an adult doing stuff to spark interest / curiosity / expectation of learning. Reading a book to them, playing card/board games with them, horsing around outside.
Maybe you are all doing this already, but just wanted to throw in my "let's see what ole Doc Washburn has to say". Also, I am not a big fan of electronics/screens for kids, esp little ones - I am starting to think they really are doing some damage to young brains. That's a whole 'nother thread though...
Good luck and be patient! Every kid has a different path, and it probably isn't what you expect. My youngest took FOREVER to get there. She barely made it through middle school, bad grades improving to meh through high school. Scraped into ISU, continued slow improvement and got better grades and a BS. Eventually got a Masters and is a successful professional. But man, there were some scary times and school was not the worst of it.
Maybe you are all doing this already, but just wanted to throw in my "let's see what ole Doc Washburn has to say". Also, I am not a big fan of electronics/screens for kids, esp little ones - I am starting to think they really are doing some damage to young brains. That's a whole 'nother thread though...
Good luck and be patient! Every kid has a different path, and it probably isn't what you expect. My youngest took FOREVER to get there. She barely made it through middle school, bad grades improving to meh through high school. Scraped into ISU, continued slow improvement and got better grades and a BS. Eventually got a Masters and is a successful professional. But man, there were some scary times and school was not the worst of it.
Well he's a single father with 4 daughters. I know he tries but I doubt he has adequate time to give each daughter. He's a good father though. Just trying to help him out. I understand the screen time concerns but it's how they go to school now. No real choice.
I think there is a huge variation in kids age 4-7 and whether they are ready for kindergarten. Much different expectations for kindergarteners now versus 40 years ago when I was a kid. Kids are expected to read by the end of kindergarten and I don’t think every kid is ready for that. My parents read to me and I really didn’t start reading until 6 1/2 when something finally clicked. They recommended taking 1st grade over again. And first grade was when they were teaching reading.
For my son, I liked the BOB books. They are like little pamphlets with **** and Jane type stories. We would borrow a set from the library each week. I thought those helped us get in an appropriate amount of practice if we did 2 a night without over doing it. Because at first I did over do it. We had a a series we bought that was a step and half up from the BOB books. By the time my son was done reading one, you could see his gears were grinding and he was exhausted.
I want my kids to have confidence in themselves at an early age. So we chose to send our kids a year later. It is going to get harder because our school district ended their transitional kindergarten program which was great for our son. Instead they are doing 4 year old preschool and if they have too many 4 year olds going, a 5 year old with a summer birthday automatically get placed in kindergarten whether the parents like or not.
I just signed up for Khan Academy and will let him try it on a road trip tomorrow. It is free.
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A lot has changed. My first thought when I read this was math and science in kindergarten? If you learn how to play well with others and not eat paste, you are a success. But then again, I'm a boomer that grew up on a farm and the biggest city in the county has three thousand people (I still think they were counting the dogs in the census)
Take them to the library. That is where I learned to love reading and finding out about the world. Make it a weekly family trip for a couple hours.
The library also has a lot of educational programs and social activities for young children. Many free or very low cost. They may be able to give you some recommendations on tech.
