Lately, I find that parents need to be involved in their children’s education a lot more than when I was growing up.  In Florida, for sure I can say that they stress FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) on these kids so much that in my opinion, they do not teach the kids the fundamentals or the basic things no more and just teach them how to pass the FCAT…but this would be another post if I start on it eh…

So we have taken our own initiative to help our kids understand the basic things, our belief is that if they know the basic/fundamental things then they would have no problems passing the FCAT or any tests.

So apart from the homework or whatever school work they come home with, we get other supplements from various educational stores like Ace Educational Supplies.  We also subscribed to Jumpstart since we are living in a technologically advanced world.  So the kids are on the computer playing “games” but they are actually educational games. Jumpstart has all types of activities for kids in the 3-12 age group in all different subjects.

My son does not like to read much and if you give him a book that is really long, he zones out very quickly.  I got some short stories with pictures to grab his attention.  I notice that if kids do not like to read it is best to give them a book that contains a lot of pictures to engage them in the story.

These are some of the printable stories:

http://m.jumpstart.com/JumpstartNew/uploadedFiles/sne/anansi-and-the-visitor.pdf

http://m.jumpstart.com/JumpstartNew/uploadedFiles/sne/country-mouse-city-mouse.pdf

http://m.jumpstart.com/JumpstartNew/uploadedFiles/sne/tante-odette.pdf

You can find more stories here or activities for your child’s age group:

http://www.jumpstart.com/parents/activities

Enjoy and happy learning.

Mel

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Jumpstart or Ace Educational Supplies.  They were used as examples of places that I have found to have good educational supplements for my kids.  But it is all your choice as to where you get supplies to help your kids.