A World of Learning

 Tutoring a three-year-old, I try to play as many alphabet learning games as I can in a session, keeping her attention for the one-hour session. One of the games we play to help her learn her letters is a board game with dice. It involves rolling one die on your turn, moving forward the number of spaces on your die, and then picking a piece of construction paper with a letter on it. Then you need to be able to say what letter it is. If you get it right, you either get to move forward one space or two, depending on what the space you're on says. The first one to get to finish wins. But the game goes by so fast, I'm thinking of creating another game board that has more spaces on it so it will last longer. Also, the little girl is getting so good at the letters I have written on the pieces of paper, I'm going to have to replace them with letters that are a little more of a challenge. 

 One of the kids I work with is on the Special Olympics bowling team. Recently, they had a tournament, in which players could win either gold, silver, or bronze medals (or participation medals). Well, this boy, a freshman in high school, usually gets gutterballs when I take to regular bowling games on Tuesday afternoons. Sometimes, though, he'll knock down a few pins, then a few more on his second throw. (Throw?) I've seen him get a few strikes.  Well, when they had the tournament, his family went with him to watch him play. When I next saw him, he showed me that he was one of the participants who earned a gold medal because he got three strikes! I wish I could have seen that!  He's been so proud of his medal, which allows him to go to the next tournament, so he's been wearing it to school all week. He has been improving in his bowling skills, and I hope he does well tomorrow when I'll be taking him to his weekly bowling game! 

  I was able to sub at an elementary school again this week! It's always confusing, at this school in particular, finding my way around the different hallways and locating classrooms! Just when I start getting the hang of it, the school day is over. Figures. Well, I'll most likely sub at that school again, so hopefully I'll remember some of what I learned this week.  But all of that is beside the point. Something that I saw at this elementary school really caught my attention. It's a book tree! Kind of like those little libraries that people put up, but with much more imagination! Something that should catch kids' attention and make them want to take a book home. I sure would enjoy looking at the choice of what there was to read. But I'm always looking for something new to read.  This past summer, I participated in the Adult Summer Reading program at the local library. I received a free book for signing up! I was able to choose one from a specific shelf. Also, t...

 Hello again everyone! I got the opportunity to sub at another school this past week, one that I worked at last school year, but this is the first time this school year. I mostly worked with the Kindergarteners and 1st graders this time. I helped two kids finish up their math papers, where they were learning to count squares with dots in them to differentiate between the squares without dots. For instance, there may be 20 squares, but only nine of them will have dots in them. So the kids need to count the squares with dots to find out what the correct answer is. There was one "problem" that confused me, though. There was an image of a christmas tree with birds inside, and two birds outside. I wasn't sure if the kids were supposed to count the birds inside the tree to get the right answer, or count the birds on the OUTside. So I asked the teacher and she said they had to add up all of them. So it was easy for the kids after that.  Another time, I helped a Kindergarten boy ...

 I was tutoring the three-year-old girl I work with yesterday, and we were going through our usual routine of "games" (so they seem to her) teaching her the letters of the alphabet. I was surprised when, out of the blue, she turned to me and said "I love you." It really surprised me! She is so sweet and innocent! Funny, too. Whenever I come to the door, she runs to it shouting, "tutor Tia's here!" She also usually asks me if I have any "canny" (candy), since I give a piece to my students for work well done, with a good attitude.  I can usually only keep her attention for about half an hour, but yesterday we went for an hour! I added some activities, particularly tracing lines and shapes in a dry-erase picture book. As long as I have each learning activity seem like a game, she'll keep at it. She's even learning how to write her name. I always hold her hand, having her hold the pencil correctly, and explain what we're doing step-by...

 No matter how much a student loves a particular subject, or how accomplished they are at it, they always love to take a break for recess! Since I've been subbing at the elementary schools again, I've had times when I was on watching recess duty. I've noticed that the kids play pretty much the same games that I played when I was in elementary school! Kickball, foursquare, tetherball, and soccer. I was great at tetherball when I was about ten years old. Except for the time I swung at the ball, missed, and got hit - smack on the side of my face by the ball! That one stung for sure! But I can have a sort of "recess" in my tutoring sessions as well. I always have a learning game planned for the day, and I cycle through my list of games so the kids don't get bored with one in particular. They really like the "cup game", where I hide words or math equations inside red Solo cups and they have to get three cups right three times without getting "ZONK!...