section 9
Soon we are going to read!
4 years
53 meeting
Let’s review:
Once the meeting starts, welcome everyone and ask the participants: • Who can help us remember what we talked about in our last meeting? • Who was able to do the activity at home that we asked you to do at the end of the meeting? How did it go? • Does anyone have questions or concerns after doing the activity?
What are we going to learn? We are going to learn how to stimulate language and concentration in a child.
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT! We are going to look at some pictures, so we can talk about what we all know about this topic.
What reaction do your children have when they listen to a book?
Why do you think it is important to read to children before they know how to read?
What sounds or letters are difficult for your child to pronounce? What have you done to help them avoid pronunciation problems?
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Activity:
“Sounds that speak” We are going to develop various activities to stimulate the language and concentration of a child.
What we’ll need: • Small boats made of paper • Basins of water
WHAT WE’LL DO: Explain to the participants that they can do various activities with their four-year-old children to help them develop their language and concentration and that today at the meeting they are going to practice these exercises together. Some exercises: • Playful eyes: We will sit in front of the child and ask them to try to look at their eyebrows, then their bellybutton, then their right ear, then the left ear - always trying to move the eyes in a straight line. Do this a few times. Then ask them to direct you in the eye movement and ask him/her what they saw. • Putting eyes close together: Ask them to extend their arm with their index finger pointing up, then slowly move the index finger toward the nose until it touches the nose. Have them follow the index finger with their eyes. Do this a few times. Then ask them to direct you in the eye movement and ask him/her what they saw. • Following the fly: We will use a pencil and say the the eraser is the fly, we tell the child not to loose sight of the fly, move the pencil slowly to about 50 cms from their eyes and then back. Do this a few times. Then ask them to direct you in the eye movement and ask him/her what they saw. • Vowels: Ask the group to repeat the following: “There are five vowels in English and they are “a, e, i, o, u”. Say: “Aaaaa, eeeee, iiiii, oooo, uuuu.” Say these along to the rhythm of a well-known song in your community or simply by clapping your hands to a beat. Have the children “fold” their tongue, make their lips look like “trumpets”, make animal sounds, play at making all kinds of different sounds. • Blowing boats (concentration, breathing and attention game): Blow onto a paper boat that is floating in a wide basin of water. Blow the boat all the way across the basin of water. Other Suggestions: • Encourage the adults to actively participate, have fun and not worry about “acting like children.” • Help children learn to count. You can count anything around the house: rocks, eggs, beans, shoes, flowers.
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Summing Up:
What did we learn today? Now, we’ll review what we discussed today. • How do you feel after this meeting? Why? • What are the two most important things you’ve learned today? • What will you do differently based on what you learned during the meeting? • What did you like the most? Are there things you didn’t like? • Do you have any remaining concerns or questions about what we talked about? To finish, what would you recommend to improve today’s meeting when we do it again with another group. (Explain that answering this question will help the meeting be even better in the future for parents with small children.)
To do at home:
Tell participants to find at least two familiar children’s songs to write down and bring to the next meeting in order to have a community sing-a-long.
Basic information for the facilitator: Learning more about reading soon: 1- Checking a child’s eyesight:
• In order to support children in their development, it is important that they can see well. • Check your child’s eyesight by doing the following: • Near and far: As a game, ask a child how far away a specific object is. It can be an animal, a tree, a person or any object. Then, ask them what they see up close, show them a picture and have them describe what they see. • If you see that a child scrunches up her face or squeezes her eyes together in order to see it more clearly, take her to a specialist who can find out what the cause of these problems might be.
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2- Learning to control the eyes:
• Have the child sit at your right hand side and ask them without moving their head to move their eyes up as far as they can as if they were looking at the crown of their head. Then have them look below them to their stomach, then look to their right (if they don’t know right from left you can help them by pointing) then to their left. Do this a number of times and then ask them to lead you through the same exercise. • Then play a game with your child where he “draws” big circles, triangles and squares with his eyes. Also have him follow an object with his eyes that you slowly draw in the air.
3- Reading with pictures:
• Children at this age are able to participate more during reading time. They can tell their parents a familiar story while following the pictures in the book. Children continue to enjoy being read to before bed or when they are sleepy.
4- Vocabulary:
• Two and three-year-olds increase their vocabulary by learning the names of objects found at home. Now it is time to start increasing their vocabulary by learning the names of things in the community. • A good way to do this is to draw pictures of the words they can learn. For example: animals in the community or animals found in books. Another way to do this is to cut out pictures of the words that the child is learning and show them to the child. • At this age children start to invent stories. Parents can ask children to tell stories that use the new words they are learning. • These are games that help children learn how to pronounce words: • tongue-twisters, • say a list of words that are all the same sound • make movements with the tongue • speak with the mouth all scrunched up and try to talk with the mouth closed.
Facilitator’s Manual