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Mon Sep 17 22:18:34 CEST 2007

Homework

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Today I sat down for the second time with Gentan, doing his home-
work together. When I first heard that my son would get  homework
assignments  I was a little sceptical; after all, isn't it a lit-
tle early for homework? I was thinking of  his  tender  age,  and
that  I  could  not remember me getting homework till much later,
perhaps when I was six or so.

I realized quickly that my worrying was quite unfounded- the lev-
el of the homework was perfect for him, and neither was it manda-
tory like it is for older children- thereby avoiding  the  stress
factor.  Instead,  both  Gentan and I found it really fun. He got
the opportunity to surprise me with how much he knew, and  I  got
the satisfaction of just being with him, watching him concentrate
on a problem.

Wonderful.

Just as a  note:  the  homework  consisted  of  three  parts- 
phonics(1):  associate  letters  and their sounds with
the pronounciation of the first syllable of the sounds of 
common objects. e.g. S -> snake, I->igloo. 
phonics(2): given a list of simple words on flash cards,
figure out the sound of the first letter. e.g. the first
sound of the word 'pig' is pə
numbers:  Given a series of numbers printed on a sheet
of paper, fill in the missing numbers.  
e.g.  (1,2,blank,blank,5) or (4,blank,blank,7,8).

Fun!


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