Weekend Reflections: Are you your child’s cheer leader?

Dominique Parenting and Kids, Weekend Reflections Parental Support, weekend reflections

The blue cheerleading squad

During the Upper Primary Sports Day held last week I had the opportunity to view the different houses doing their cheer leading during the cheer leading segment. I took the opportunity to test out the fish eye function on the DSLR. I didn’t know that there were editing functions directly embedded within the camera for processing the photos which are taken.

Blue house cheer leading attempt

It as really cute to see the students all doing a synchronized dance and belting out their house cheers. I didn’t manage to capture the other 4 houses doing their cheer leading performances as I was busy looking after Tiger girl who was busy exploring the stadium as it was her first visit to the place.

Looking at the camaraderie between the members of the various houses and their cheer leading squad made me wonder how active I am in being my child’s cheer leader and rooting for him. Giving him both moral and physical support when he needs it the most.

It is a real delicate balance being supportive and seeming over bearing as a parent. On one hand we want our child to have their own experiences and fight their own battles and on the other hand we want to make sure that they grow up having a healthy self esteem.

I hope my kids do grow up knowing that their mum has always been rooting for them even though I may not appear to be as enthusiastic about certain issues like they are.

Are you your child’s cheerleader too?

What have you been blogging about? Join in this week in our Weekend Reflections .

March 15, 2013

Holisitic Learning with Doggie Boy

Dominique Parenting and Kids, Recommendations Auditory skills, Doggie boy, Holisitic Learning

Since attending the assessment sessions at Thinkersbox with the boys I have been carrying out their follow up activities with Doggie boy to improve on his Auditory Attention.

One of the suggested activities was the following.
Listening to ‘key words’ in a story

Pick any story or passage and read it to the child (a story that the child is interested in)

Decide on a ‘key’ word that the child needs to listen out for (choose a common word that is likely to come up many times in
the passage – such as ‘the’, ‘she’, ‘we’, etc)

As you read through the story or passage, the child needs to count how many times the key word was being said (the child can either use their fingers to count (if key word will appear less than 10 times) or write ‘1’ on a piece of paper every time they hear the key word.
At the end of the story or passage, check the child ’s answer by going through the story together with the child again (this can also help improve word recognition and reading skills)

Book Cover

Stella Strawberry The Fruit of Love is one of the books which I tried the activity with Doggie boy. The word that I had chosen was “LOVE” which could be found all throughout the book. Sometimes the word is repeated a few times on the same page. Doggie boy used his fingers to count the number of times the word appeared but he soon ran out of fingers and lost count when it went beyond 10 times. It was a good first attempt on his part though to listen actively for the chosen word.

Photo courtesy of Tales4all.com

The second time that we tried this activity I decided to use a different medium- audio books. The Treebob Audio Books are a great selection of books for kids to listen to. Each story is 15-16 minutes long and is entertaining enough to sustain a child’s interest in the storyline. Before letting Doggie boy listen to the story I told him that I was looking out for the number of instances that the main character- Rotten Rina had her name mentioned.

On this occasion he was able to accurately tell me the number of times the name was mentioned. Doggie boy was also able to relate the storyline to me after listening to the story.

I will be doing more audio books and reading of varied types of book with Doggie boy in weeks to come. Hopefully these activities will lead to a further improvement in his auditory skills.

Post in this series

1. Holistic Learning an Introduction

2. Becoming a Budgeting Accountant- Getting Started.

3. Updates on Monkey boy being a Budgeting Accountant.

4. Holistic Learning with Doggie Boy

5. Holistic Learning- Dealing with Emotions

6. Holistic Learning- Understanding your Creative Pattern