Of Sonshine & English assessment books

 

What's up with Sonshine's home learning? Well....

 

 

It's assessment books after assessment books!

 

I have no energy nor time to think up of an activity for him. I think the fastest way to get him on home learning with me is doing assessment books. I can't say he enjoys it :I. But still, i want him to get use to doing work-something which he will have to face next year. However, i try not to tax him too heavily, i only give about 20 minute work max a day.

 

On a side note, I find myself buying and buying AND buying assessment books. I don't know why it is so addictive! But the other reason why i do that is because i learnt that each assessment books focus on different areas. I can't rely on one to touch on all areas within a subject even if i can, it means the exercises are very brief and not as detailed as i would like it to be.

So i find myself buying an assessment book JUST for comprehension, another one for Grammar, then another one for Vocabulary and on and on and on... *Sweat* And i am just talking about English subject alone mind you.

 

I also learnt that assessment books differ in their level of difficulty. Some are designed to boost your child's confidence, others are out to tell your child that he is erm, 'not so clever'. So my advice is, choose your assessments books very very carefully. Find one that matches to your child's learning ability: not too easy and not too hard.

 

 

 

Moving along...This may bore the living daylights of you but some have asked me about what assessment books i used. So i'll start with English- part one.

 

I have two (ok maybe more) comprehension assessment books for sonshine. These two books are like day and night for sonshine. One is too easy and the other is a tad tough for him. The one above is the easy one.

 

 

I don't know if it is just my son, but the above book has proven to be quite challenging for SOnshine. I think some of its questions are not straight forward but yet i think it shouldn't be too tough for a child who reads regularly. It got me worried about Sonshine comprehension skills after seeing how he sort of struggle with some of the questions from this book. It has also caused alot of rift between me and him *ooops*. And this book is the main culprit why he tells me " I don't want to do comprehension!".

 

That's why i say, find an assessment book that is not too tough for your kid. Otherwise he/she will be totally put off and it may be hard to get the child to like the topic. :P

 

This book is relatively easy; it is set to be like a revision test each week. It is divided into 4 terms and 10 weeks in each term. So the child is suppose to one chapter a week. Each chapter is relatively short so it doesn't tax the child too much.

 

Lastly, nothing to do with assessment books but a small activity i did with him this week.

 

I stuff a couple of household stuff in an unused pillow case; wrote some adjectives on post it pad and lay them down. The game goes like this. Sonshine has pick an object from the pillow case but before he draws it out, he has to describe the object using adjectives. The list of post it pads was to help him & also to help him categorised the adjectives (blue post it pad were size adjectives, yellow was on texture and pink was shapes). He also used other adjectives that were not listed on the post it pads.

 

It was a simple game but Sonshine enjoyed it alot...much better than assessment books for sure!