Many parents feel unsure about whether their kids are getting too much or not enough homework. Some complain that their kids sit for hours to do their homework, while others say, “I never see them sitting for 5 minutes”. Over the years, with three kids in different schools, I have also said that homework was too much or that I do not see the kids doing homework at all.
Q: My daughter can’t learn the colors. Is she color blind and what do I do if she is?
There is a big difference between challenges in learning the colors and being color blind. Most people believe someone who is color blind can only see in black and white, but monochromatic vision is extremely rare and is mostly caused by some disease or trauma. 99% of the time, color blindness is the inability to distinguish shades of green-and-red or blue-and-yellow.
Read Is My Kid Color Blind? »
I think I have written about school uniform and its (negative) educational value many times, yet somehow, I do not have the feeling I have written enough. I hope you can read my frustration with this topic in my sarcasm, because I am not happy at all.
Read Pink Hair Band »
Yesterday, Ronit wrote about her experiences with kids who were mentally stuck in norms and invisible rules at the age of 6. Their creativity was stifled by notions of “right” and “wrong” and external opinions about what is pretty, messy or appropriate. Today, I would like to share with you some more signs of kids being stuck like this, along with a wonderful video clip.
Read Are Your Kids Free? »
When young kids go to any formal education, their knowledge of colors is checked. Colors are an easy way to check learning and it is possible to start teaching the colors at a very early age. Kids as young as 2 years old can learn their colors and build good learning connections in their brain. The earlier they start, the better it is for their learning abilities. So how to teach kids colors?
It is very important to understand the process of learning when teaching kids abstract concept like colors. For kids to recognize a color, they need to have accumulated hundreds of information pieces that help them define that color concept.
The understanding of what this thing is not is greatly helpful in forming a concept. We call these “negative examples”. When you show a kid an apple and say the color is green, it is possible for the kid to remember the shape of the apple and think this is the meaning of green. You must also show an apple that is not green.
Through our examples, we need to help our kids learn that color has no shape. Green can be an apple, a fabric or a leaf.
Read How to Teach Kids Colors »
Before you start it, parenting seems daunting. You could be in for years of giving up your personal freedoms to one or more creatures who become more and more demanding as they grow older, while you run around trying to satisfy their insatiable appetite for your time and your money. Indeed, without using The Tao of Parenting, this could be the case, but it does not have to be.
Read The Tao of Parenting »
Yesterday, during a session with two of my parenting clients, they asked me again, “Why do you send your kids to school?” My answer was “Because kids are like mice – they need friends”. Research on mice and relationship has found that mice that spent their time with other mice live longer – as a matter a fact, twice as long – than mice who lived on their own. Happy kids, just like happy mice, need company and this is the main reason for sending kids to school.
Read Kids are Like Mice »
If you want your kids to study well and succeed in everything they do, first you need to make sure they have the right fuel to make their body function. Many people think that success at school is totally connected to how smart kids are but unfortunately, kids’ “smartness” is highly effected by the way they manage their body.
Many times, we do not know if kids actually know things, because they are too young to tell us. In fact, they know a lot more than they can tell. As parents, we can sometimes ask our kids questions that are simply too advanced for them, conclude they do not know the answer and become disappointed with their lack of knowledge. This does not have to be so.
Read How Kids Learn »
Who is not afraid of tests?
When I was a school kid (and not a very good one, mind you), I hated tests. I used to be so scared I was sick on the day. Sometimes, this worked and I got to stay at home, but most of the times I still had to go to school and take the test. The more I was afraid of tests, the worse my grades were. You could say that the worse I thought I would do, the more I feared the test.
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