train up your child's thinking skills: copying & writing
DESCRIPTION
This is part one of the series of cognitive skills related e-Books. In this book, you would find some recommended activities to improve your child's copying and writing (fine motor) skills, and how this is an important skill for learning. We hope that you would find these books useful and informative. For any suggestions or feedback, please head on to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WS8Q9CR. Thank You!TRANSCRIPT
2
What are Learning Skills?------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction to SOI-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Parents’ Role-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dos and Don’ts-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Understanding the Skill: Fine Motor for Copying and Writing--------
Activity 1: Screws and Nuts---------------------------------------------------------
Activity 2: Basket Cotton Balls-----------------------------------------------------
Activity 3: Other Fine Motor Skills Games------------------------------------
More about Writing and Copying--------------------------------------------------
Contact Us-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2
Content Page 3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
3
Learning skills also referred to as Cognitive Skills are foundational skills needed in areas such as comprehension, memory, evaluation, processing, logic and reasoning, etc.
Using sports as an analogy: In order to play soccer well, the player must first be equipped with the basic skills of dribbling, passing, control and tackling, etc.
In the same way, we need to first equip our children with the basic skills of learning such as paying attention, reading words effectively, being careful with their work, retain their learning well, etc so that we can ensure a motivated, engaged and successful learner.
At ThinkersBox, we hope to help children to ‘Learn to Think and Think to Learn’ by improving and strengthening their underlying learning skills. �
What are Learning Skills?
4
The Structure of Intellect (SOI)
The Structure of Intellect (SI) Model was established by Professor J. P. Guilford, a well-known psychologist in the 1950s, as a way to measure intelligence. The model was further developed into the SOI by Dr. Mary Meeker, Guilford’s student and a school psychologist, in the early 1960s. The SOI profiles was used to provide classroom teachers with information on how they can plan classroom materials that could meet the different needs of their students. The most important contribution however, was Dr. Mary Meeker’s realization that intelligence can be taught, trained and improved. At ThinkersBox, we work closely with SOI Systems to assess, train and improve the learning of children and help them become successful learners.
4
In response to parents’ need for resources and ideas to help their child learn better, we have developed this series of guidebooks with simple, easy to implement home-based activities for parents to do with their child.
These activities are meant to be fun, engaging and promotes parent-child bonding.
As you work with your child, you would begin to realise their potential and the true meaning of educating our children (beyond school textbooks and subjects)
**Instructions for the activities are suggested as a rough guideline. Feel free to change it to suit the age and learning of your child.
The Parents Role
5
�✓ Do the activities with your � child
✓ Encourage him/her to do � better
✓ Encourage your child to be � creative when doing the � activities!
✓ Have fun carrying out the � activities!
�
Dos and Donts
✗ Scold the child if he does the activities wrongly, instead, explain to him the objective and tell him the instructions explicitly
✗ Carry out the activity for too long (once the child �gets bored or tired of doing the same activity, stop for the day)
6
✔ Do the activities with your child
✔ Encourage him/her to do
better ✔ Encourage your child to be
more creative when doing the activities
✔ Have fun carrying out the
activities!
" Improving fine motor skills would contribute to neater handwriting and copying of details
" It is the underlying ability for copying, writing and drawing tasks
Understanding the skill:
Fine Motor for Copying & Writing
7
8
Activity 1:
Screws and Nuts
" Have a few screws and nuts of different sizes�
" Challenge the child to twist on and off the screw within a given time
9
Activity 2:
Basket Cotton Balls
" Loop a string and hold it out in front of the child�
" Give the child 10 cotton balls�
" Have the child throw the cotton balls through the loop
(adapted from http://spaghettiboxkids.com/blog/fine-motor-skills-activities/)
9
10
Activity 3:
Fine motor skill games
" These games help to build fine muscles in the fingers and improves fine motor skills�
" Jenga/Uno Stacker/Pick-up sticks
" Instead of buying the pick-up sticks, gather a bunch of chopsticks/coloured ice cream sticks to play
10
11
More about
Fine Motor Skills
" Writing and copying is essentially the most basic mode of learning
" As children copy the content of lesson taught from the whiteboard, they are reinforcing what they have learnt
" Perhaps one other good reason to improve copying and writing skills is to avoid being marked wrong for an answer that was meant to be correct!
11
12
On an ending note... We hope that you would find these activities as fun and effective as we meant for it to be.
Let us know if you’ve enjoyed using these e-Books �@ http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WS8Q9CR
For other feedback and suggestions, �email us @ [email protected]
For more information, visit us @ www.thinkersbox.com
For more interesting reads, �follow our blog @ www.kidslearntothink.com
12
13
Stay tune for the next 3
installments on Creativity for different aspects (objects,
words and symbols), which would be published by the
end of January!
The End!
13