Monday, July 16, 2012

Phys Ed Has Left The Building - What We Need to Do Instead

If you have a child in the public school system of virtually any state, you are being confronted with serious to-the-bone cuts at your local school. It's not just administrative, it's the teaching staff.

Many school systems are utterly at sea in the midst of the changes and their profound inability to respond. The cards are stacked against success. Yet, most teachers are in the field for the love of teaching. The salary level isn't their great motivator. They persevere with the patience of saints.

As parents, we can help them by making an extra effort at home. Parents need to pay attention and fill in the blanks, the holes left in the present circumstances of their child's schooling. Physical education, "phys ed" is an important and now missing, link.

That Phys Ed promotes fitness of the body and mind is a simple truth. Sports and exercise are key to keeping everything in top condition.

The reasons are so compelling: Phys Ed fights childhood obesity which is known to be a precursor to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Various Phys Ed activities burn calories and fat, build muscles, strengthens the immune system and increases stamina and the mental concentration that goes along with it.

Your child may not become an Olympian, but their study skills will improve with their continued dedication and stamina developed by playing sports--it's a fact.

Participation in sports teaches life lessons that may not be learned elsewhere. How to win and lose with grace. How to collaborate as a team. When to be a leader.

This kind of activity goes hand in hand with healthy eating habits. Anyone who works out or plays sports regularly fully appreciates how much better everything works when their diet is full of healthy choices- fruits as opposed to high sugar snacks.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

How to Make Your Child Study Well

Apparently, all parents want their children to study hard and in the majority of cases they get dejected when their efforts prove to be damp squib. What is to be done then? Blowing one's top and make them study forcefully is a futile exercise. What is the possible way out then to make them study well? The answer to this is simple. Just apply a little child psychology and get wonderful results.

It all begins with the preliminary years of child rearing. All children have an inquisitive mind and as they start growing they want to discover and know more. It is this trait of child psychology that can be traded on. Be very careful to satisfy their quest, however stupid it may appear to you. Indulge with them in their formative years and make learning a fun-filled exercise of them. It can be done easily by telling them the colors of all the objects that they play with. Make numbers easy for them by making them count their toys time and again.

Children should be made to learn naturally by their mothers. Next is the stage when the child begins to read and write. It is the time when they should be bought interesting and colorful story books to them. Children love to read stories and it is the best way to build their vocabulary, grammar and sentence formation. Once this habit of reading story books is inculcated, they would always look forward to read the prose of their text books. Also, let them copy the text of these story books and let them draw the colorful pictures on their drawing notebooks. They would do so with interest.

Mathematics, which is considered to be a haunting subject, can be made easier. Apparently, mathematics can be learned with much ease when its applications are used in day to day life. Play riddles with your children. Let them do the simple calculations that they often come across. Make it a fun by playing number games with them. Ask them to count the objects on their disposal. They would just love to count them. When they grow they would love to indulge in intricate mathematical calculations and it is the time to get them the gadgets which can make learning of mathematics a real fun.

For the reasons so apparent, children always want to keep their textbooks at bay. Please put yourself at ease when they do so repeatedly. Instead let them discover their own ways of learning and you would just be enchanted by the results you get.