My son went into the 2nd grade struggling with his academics. Especially Reading and comprehension. Here are some tips that helped my child improve in school. First grade was extremely difficult for the both of us. As my first born, I was the mom of a first grader for the first time and the homework seemed to be too much for him. Can we all say Common Core Blah! It was frustrating and led to disappointment when we both were at our wits end. I had no idea how to motivate him and he would get upset or discouraged easily. Over the summer, I made sure to keep my son educationally active. We’d read, go to the library, review words. We still struggle with pronunciation but little by little it started coming together. As 2nd grade started, I made sure to try and find a little more peace within. As a working mom, it can be taxing to have to come home, and be an octopus, wearing different hats for everyone’s needs.
Two months into 2nd grade, I told myself I had to put my son, his homework and academics first. I stopped cooking every night. We order out or eat out a at least 2 times a week. Or we just have easy to make meals. Don’t get me wrong, I still cook some evenings and manage to juggle all my tasks as said octopus. However if I had to put off the some chores, I’d say to myself, “Que se caiga la casa” which means, “Let the house fall down”. Of course, I don’t mean that literally but in other words, there are times I have to let laundry pile up or leave vacuuming for later, school work became more important. The housework would wait.
Some nights we spend 20 minutes on homework, others an hour and let me tell you that hour has really helped. Every Monday, the teacher sends us a packet of papers the kids worked on, graded and marked. I go through that paperwork carefully, pay attention to what he got wrong and right. I pull out pages to review and work on it. I’ll rewrite questions for him or reword them.
We practice practice practice and it has helped tremendously. Initially I didn’t pay as much attention to these papers coming home, but I realized they were the clues to what he was struggling with. And honestly, he’s got an amazing teacher this year and that makes a big difference.
The only thing we still struggle with is his reading, so I find incentives. If you do this reading, you will earn time with your ipad, etc. Also, I buy practice books for him to work on. Some at Dollar Tree and others at Barnes and Noble or BJ’s. You can see some of the workbooks in this picture and we’re already practicing for 3rd grade.
If you invest a little time now during the early grades, the later grades will be a little smoother. This summer I plan on putting my son in a summer reading program. I am hoping it will make a huge impact on his reading since I can’t seem to breakthrough on this topic. I’ll let you know how that goes.
I totally agree that it’s so important to review what the teachers do in class. I did that since kindergarten. I would go over it with him to make sure he understood. And the ones he got wrong I noticed he would second guess himself so I told him to go with his first instinct and he has and now improved so much than before.
Spending time with your kids and their homework really makes a difference. They learn that it’s important if you make it feel that way.
Great job on your accomplishment.