Monday, November 28, 2011

The Benefits of Educational Programs at Home For Young Children

Staying involved in your children's education is one of the most important acts you can do to encourage future educational success. Most parents have high hopes for their children and wish that their children will live a happy, successful and fulfilled life. Education plays a large role in children's success and can also create many possibilities for their future. To create that success, it is important that parents guide and help their kids at young age in order to create strong building blocks for their educational future.

Though many parents are ready and willing to help their children get a head start in their learning, they do not have the ability or understanding of how to personally teach their kids. In order to help parents to assist their children in reading, writing and arithmetic at a young age, educational programs have come into existence to create a medium for parents to teach their children by using specialized educational material. As educational programs have progressed, there is now a diverse amount of material available including books, workbooks and flashcards as well as musical instruction and computer games. The diversity in the educational material allows children to have fun while they are learning. As a parent myself, I have found that the hardest part of learning for children is keeping them focused. By having a diverse collection of educational material, kids will always feel challenged and stimulated.

Educational programs are specifically beneficial to home school parents or parents who have children struggling at school. Children who struggle with reading, writing and math at a young age will have a harder time in school in future years. Educational programs allow parents to work with their children one on one, and expose them to a different method of teaching then in their classroom. Giving that specific attention to your kids and combining it with diverse, interactive and stimulating educational material will facilitate your kid's growth in education.

The question is: There are many educational programs out there, but which one do you choose? I have had tried many educational programs for my own children. I have found the best brand out there is Hooked on Phonics. This company had a large amount of material to choose from that you can purchase based on your kids needs. They also provide several programs designed for kids between the ages of 3 - 10 which targets reading, writing and math. They have even created educational activities for babies and toddlers!

An Award Winning Educational Program - Learn to Read With Hooked on Phonics

Every child learns to read, write, pronounce and spell words at a different pace. If a child finds learning by reading boring, he may just make up his mind that it is a useless exercise and may even refuse to learn. Once children make up their mind not to learn following a particular method, it becomes very frustrating for the parents to try and convince them that they must learn the English language. For a small child, learning the English language is akin to learning a second language.

Many parents who feel that their child may lag in learning English or are not doing so well in it in the school have tried the hooked on phonics system and have been amazed by its results. Hooked on phonics is rightly an award winning educational program as millions of children have benefited from it.

Hooked on phonics is an interesting and entertaining method of teaching children how to read, spell and pronounce English alphabets and words. The program starts at a slow pace and then gradually picks up. The accompanying music makes it entertaining for the child to learn. This program spends a lot of time in ensuring that letters prompt a verbal cue. Flash cards and now prompts on CDs and DVDs are used. Hooked on phonics has also introduced an MP3 version and children can now listen to it on iPods.

Remember a lot can go wrong when children are taught English by conventional methods. The teacher may not know how to teach a language or may be using the wrong pronunciation. For this, children cannot be blamed. The English language consists of only 26 alphabets, but the correct pronunciation of them in words can be very complex and difficult for a child to understand. In English, vowels have no accent and children have to commit to memory their different forms. The vowel E has no sound in the word "knife" but is stressed in the word "engine".

The approach that has been adopted by this program is to teach children the correct pronunciation of each alphabet. After they have mastered these, the next step is to categorize sound clusters. The child learns when the sound of an alphabet needs to be stressed and where it needs to be kept low. An adult may not think twice about the difference in pronouncing the alphabet "B" in bat and bet. Hence, teaching a child can be quite difficult. This is where this program excels at teaching children how to read, spell and pronounce alphabets.

Hooked on phonics starts at a very easy pace and children are not stressed out in learning alphabets and then their correct usage in words. Once the foundations have been carefully laid, it becomes easy and interesting for the children to learn.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Music Teaching Resources Make Better Music Education Programs

Music teaching resources are fun, reliable and effective tools in motivating both the students and their teachers. These have been great ways to help us modify and take advantage of every innovation that we can use to take music teaching to a much higher level. Read on and realize how these amazing technologies can bring out the best in your music teaching strategies.

Music is a part of every cultural system way, way back since the ancient times or even the prehistoric age. Early inhabitants produced sounds by stamping their feet and producing hums. The introduction of information age has paved way to the development of music with an accompaniment of instruments. Because of such progress, music became a well-known and unique human form of communication with well-developed styles, fashions, techniques, rules and constructions of words.

Today, there are different emerging patterns and music genres in which 'pop' is the most famous. Of course, the younger generations especially those who are music enthusiasts always find music tutorials who could give them advanced learning in a very creative, trendy, and innovative way. There are existing music teaching resources which have been utilized in music schools, universities and tutorial centers. These resources have helped various music professionals and teachers to deliver an up-to-date lectures, discussions and modalities. It can be used in different pedagogical approaches - whether you like a distance learning or face-to-face mentoring.

The music teaching resources include useful packages for all the music educators and professionals who wish to nourish their knowledge in a most effective and efficient way. With its wide range of features - time and schedule management, tasks assignment, progress monitoring and evaluation, technology research, updates and upgrades, you will surely find it very useful. Plus, the teaching resources integrate various modules on music coaching and training.

Each module has various sessions starting from the basic of interpreting speech patterns: loud or soft, high pitched or low pitched, rapid and bitten off or slow and smooth; up to the toughest lessons of music variables and dynamics. You will also learn different genres of music aside from your own forte that will make you a versatile and well-rounded music educator. There are also some structured learning activities and hands-on workshops that you will find very useful and enjoyable.

An added value to these teaching resources are the stepwise tips and guidelines on how to cope up with the different music preference of your students, as well their attitudes and behavior. Verily, this music teaching package is not only useful for music mentoring, but is also ideal for personality development and management.