Back to School & Social Graces

In my eyes, social grace is the way God expects us to be. He expects us to be kind, respectful and love one another. It should be taught to our children by example in our everyday lives. Unfortunately with social media of today, our children see more disrespect, unkindness and lack of love than they do grace. This is why it does not hurt to re-start those graces in which God would like for us to practice by practicing them with our children everyday and encouraging them to conduct their days with love, kindness and respect. Really you cannot have one without the others.

Many will disagree with my theory and say social grace is not "grace" in the eyes of God. But think about it for a second; if you love, you are kind to others and you respect yourself, you will respect others! Teaching your children social grace encompasses all of the above! So why not give it a try?

You cannot start teaching children Social Graces too soon, and now is a great time to brush up on those skills before you send them back to school! Emily Post's The Gift of Good Manners: A Parents Guide to Raising Respectful, Kind Considerate Children is a great book and can be found on Amazon for $12.58!

Your child's new teacher will certainly appreciate all of your efforts, I can assure you! Emily Post suggests that you start by building empathy with your child to help teach good behavior and manners. Helping your child to understand kindness and love along with truthfulness is a great way to start. Tell them you expect them to play well with others, to share and be inclusive. Reminding them of how it feels when others did not share with them, or include them, is building empathy and helps them to understand. Expect the best behavior from your child, and nine times out of ten they will exhibit it. Give them little reminders each day about inviting their new friends to join in and gentle reminders about remembering to say please and thank you or yes/no 'mam or sir.

Before school starts, get back in a nightly routine of sitting down together for dinner as a family. Have your little ones set the table encouraging right placement of utensils. I carry a new line of personalized place mats that have the place settings on the place mat. A great way for them to learn! (click here for place mats) When at the table follow through with polite conversation and encourage your child to sit with no elbows or heads on the table; and most of all....try to chew with their little mouths closed!

These gentle reminders will help them to develop basic social grace that they can build upon as they grow. You will be helping your child and making her/his teacher so happy! A teacher just loves a polite well mannered, kind, loving, truthful, loving child and so will you!
Click below for link to Amazon for Emily Post's The Gift of Good Manners
Emily Post's Book

What an absolutely fabulous idea! With school right around the corner and getting kids back into the swing of things these little punch cards are great. Blog "eighteen 25" is offering a free download for Good Deed Cards. 
Every time your child performs a good deed or follow through with a chore you punch their cards allowing the kids to earn a special treats. You can offer a trip to the toy store, special dinner date with mom and dad (no siblings allowed) or something special they want to do or have.
I would suggest getting tag board or card stock for sturdiness. Just follow me (click here) to "eighteen 25" look for the download button, save to your computer and print a set and start using right away!

Mastering Handwriting

Here I go again about a child mastering handwriting in kindergarten. I have taught children that have not been encouraged to write within a space and others that have. My personal opinion, a child that learns to form the alphabet within a confined space usually masters the efficiency of letter formations sooner than a child that is given a blank sheet of paper with no direction. A child in kindergarten should be encouraged to begin forming letters in an efficient way. I know that there are a few that do not agree with this, but I have experienced this while working with pre-k, kindergarten and first graders and it does make a difference!  Handwriting directly supports the writing to read process! Click here to see tablets

I have noticed that once an incorrect muscle memory forms it is very difficult to reteach! Working with your child and encouraging proper letter formation is very important for muscle memory and their progress in kindergarten. You should always encourage your child to write his/her name properly, using the uppercase letter first followed by the lowercase letters. Teach them "capital letter starts my name, then lowercase, the rest the same," kids love rhyming and it sticks with them!

If you are beginning to work with your child, start with "l". This is the letter they will read and write the most. It is great, because it starts them with the downward strokes and left to right (cross mid-line) motion, which will be used to form other letters.  The "O" is another very important letter and encourage clock and counter clockwise motion when drawing in the sky or writing on paper. 

I know it is very hard for a child to write between the lines. I always liked to make squares on a sheet (the exact number as letters in their name) and work with them to stay within the lines of the square. By the time your child gets into kindergarten it is appropriate develop- mentally, to have high expectations and you should encourage them to stay between the lines. I love the Kindergarten Lined Tablets  ($24.95) and the Kids Dry Eraser Board ($19.95) I am able to offer this school year. Not only are they personalized with the child's name, but the tablet has 75 sheets of high quality paper that is lined for your kindergartner or pre-k child. The Dry Erase Board comes with a dry-erase maker and is lined ready for handwriting and personalized at the top! Great for on the go and for the beginning. If they make a mistake they can simply wipe away and try again! Use BTS2012 at check out for a 15% discount (with a $25.00 minimum cart ;)

Importance of Sight Words

So very happy to be able to offer these great sets of Sight Words for early learners! There are three sets of sight words. Each set includes 20 sight word flash cards and 20 worksheets with each sight word used in a sentence along with a picture. The worksheets are personalized with your child's name with lined paper allowing space to practice printing the sight word as well as their name. This allows for use of the word/words in context. There are pictures to color that incorporate the sight word as well, further establishing the word into memory. What a great way for your child to learn these words and each set sells for $24.95! (Set 1, Set 2, Set 3 visit website for words used in each set ~ click here) You may choose to do a word a day, starting with the flashcards and reinforcing with the worksheets. Proudly displaying your child's work sheet on the refrigerator will reinforce their learning the word and make them eager to share their new knowledge.

Not many people really understand the importance of sight words. Reading is a very complex task; it involves pronunciation as well as meaning of words. Sight words are a group of common words that a good reader recognizes instantly. Usually they are connective words like and, of, there, to and as.  A child that masters sight words learns to read at such a greater pace because sight words are usually words that cannot be sounded out, they do not follow phonetic rules and the only way to read these words is to recognize by sight. Learning sight words eases frustrations and allows the reader to ease over words rather than struggle to figure them out. A reader that has to slow down and try to figure out words usually overloads their memory and as a result their recall suffers. Another reason for learning these words - most of them do not carry much meaning but are relevant to the sentence and gives it meaning.

As a teacher of young readers, I have found many ways to generate enthusiasm and stimulate little brains. Introducing sight words with these sets introduces these words in a meaningful way; they see the word on the flashcard with a picture and they use the worksheet to reinforce what they have seen. Repetition has always worked when I have taught sight words, we see it, we read it, we draw the word in the sky, we paint it, we trace it, we use it in a sentence, we make up silly sentences with it! I have been able to get the slowest readers to pick up their speed by incorporating visual with tactile and incorporating the words in sentences, writing and drawing......Now you can have the same at home! Give your child a head start! Visit The Polka Dot Monkeys now! Use code BTS2012 for a 15% discount (good with a $25 cart).

Back to School!

  It has been a while since my last post! My bad…while spring was somewhat busy, the summer months have been non-stop traveling, babysitting and entertaining. I am not complaining whatsoever, I have loved every minute! I have been spending my past few free days trying to upload all the Back to School goodies for The Polka Dot Monkeys. I cannot help but get excited about this year, I am able to offer personalized everything for back to school. There are binders, notebooks, folders, pencil bags, techno everything to spiff up your child’s return to school.

Not to mention memo boards, calendars and notepads to help keep mom organized. School is always so exciting for kids. Why not make it more so by sending your child back in style?

Every child likes to see their name on things and now it is not just pencils! Deck them out with personalized binders, spiral notebooks, pencil bags, phone cases and gear for their lockers as well! I think the things I am most excited about are the dry erase boards for kids, kindergarten writing tablets               and the Sight Word packets!