So as the kids head back to school, in today’s post I have a collection of resources that parents can use to help support their kids learning.

1. Blanks Levels Of Questioning

This post was a guest post from Julie who now blogs at The Useful Box. Julie is a speech pathologist and mother of three. You can find out more about Julie at the end of the post, where you will also find links to excellent articles she has written on childhood speech and language development.

In her post Blanks Levels Of Questioning – Stimulating Children’s Language Development Julie goes through the ages of kids from 2 until 5 and has suggestions for questions you can use to get them talking.

2. 10 Preschooler Early Learning Activities You Can Plan Into Your Day

This post was written in my first 6 months of blogging! I list very simple ways you can encourage learning with your kids and fit it into your usual day.

10 Preschooler Early Learning Activities You Can Plan Into Your Day also has a number of links to external sites that give overviews of basic early learning concepts.

3. Teaching Number Recognition To Preschoolers

Where possible when I am working with our kids on numeracy or literacy I try to make it fun and pretty much so they don’t even know I am trying to teach them. Teaching Number Recognition To Preschoolers (So they don’t know you are doing it!) gives you easy examples of how you can do it with your preschooler.

4. How To Create A Preschool Writing Box

There is a lot of steps that come before kids actually get to full blown writing. In this post How To Create A Preschool Writing Box I have Pre-writing Practice Worksheets you can download and list other items you might like to have available for your preschooler.

5. School Starting Age – Latest Research On Australian Children

This post receives quite a bit of search engine traffic, as it is an issue fretted over my many parents at some stage (including me!). School Starting Age – Latest Research On Australian Children doesn’t tell you what is the right decision for your child, but provides info on what is the starting age for each state and a summary of the latest research in Australia.

In a follow up post I share our personal experience with deciding what age to start school.

6. Setting Your Child up for “Success”

I really like this post from Kathy Walker. Setting Your Child up for “Success” is not about flash cards or rote learning but places emphasis on communication and self expression, good problem solving skills and resilience.

7. War and Peace or Comic Books?

This video is the perfect reminder that reading and learning should be enjoyable!

8. Writing and Spelling: Practical Ideas for Parents

Reading Rockets is a fabulous resource for parents, so if you have some time, do check out what it has to offer. Writing and Spelling: Practical Ideas for Parents gives ideas for activities and strategies you can use to help your child with spelling.

9. VELS Level 1 – Prep Year at School

The Victorian Essential Learning Standards is the Prep to Year 10 Curriculum for Victorian schools. Other states would have something similar. It is helpful as a parent to be aware of what the learning focus is for your child through out the year.

VELS Level 1 – Prep are Literacy, numeracy, interpersonal development, physical wellbeing and the arts. The table below shows where standards are set for assessment and reporting in the Prep year. Standards are set in these areas only because these are the highest priority for learning at this level. Schools devote more time to these areas since they have been set as a priority at Prep.

10. State Education Department Resources

The Education Departments of each state have dedicated sections for parents on their websites. Some are better than others, but I have listed the most useful aspects of each around the country:

• Victoria – Parent Update – a newsletter you can subscribe to which keeps you up to date with education issues in your state.
• NSW – School A to Z app – a very handy free app, that is useful for all parents even if you aren’t in NSW.
• QLD – schools + parents – subscribe to receive information about initiatives and issues that impact schools and students across all education sectors in QLD.
• SA – Parents & Community – general info for parents.
• TAS – Every Day Matters! – A free booklet you can download and is written for parents of young children starting school. It includes tips to help your child settle into school life, as well as information about what a “typical day” might be for your child in Kindergarten, Prep and Grade 1.
• WA – Parent Newsletter – a newsletter you can subscribe to which keeps you up to date with education issues in your state.
• NT – Stages of Schooling – a dwonloadable document overviewing the Learning Environment and the Learner Characteristics for each stage at school.
• ACT – Parents and School Community – general info for parents.

If you have any resources that you use or have written about on your blog, feel free to leave a link in the comments!

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Back To School – Parent Resources is a post from: Planning With Kids

I loved blogging from the minute I started and right now am more excited about blogging and its potential than I have ever been. Blogging is now my part time job and but rarely does it feel like work. I love sharing things I have learnt which have made my life easier and love reading your tips and ideas you share with me.

Over the few months there will be some changes to Planning With Kids. I received almost 600 responses to the survey before Christmas and it has given me a wealth of information on how I can improve PWK. Thanks so much to everyone who completed the survey and a very big thank you for all the lovely words and positive feedback you wrote.

To celebrate PWK turning 4, I thought I would delve into the archives and collate some of my favourite posts over this time.

From 2008

• Tea Cup Biscuits – This post was the first post was really shared widely. It still receives search engine traffic every day and has been shared on facebook 493 times.
• Family Meetings – I love family meetings and parents I know who have persevered with having them as part of their family communication strategy all find them a fantastic way to discuss issues and celebrate successes.
• My Typical Day – This post was an answer to a readers email. She asked “I guess I was kind of hoping that you might be able to find the time to sort of throw me together a schedule for an average day for you as a mother of four.” My daily routine has changes slightly now 3 years down the track, but it is still has a similar base routine that I stick to.

From 2009

• Characteristics of Two (and a half) Year Old Behavior – I wrote this post when our fourth child was two and a half and going through a challenging stage. What I loved most about this post was the way it resonated with other parents. I still receive emails from readers (I close off comments after a month to reduce annoying spam) who find this post from search engines and are so relieved to realise that they are not alone in finding this stage in their child’s development challenging.
• Coping With A Baby That Catnaps – 4 out of 5 of our babies went through stages of catnapping. It can be exhausting and drive you slightly crazy as a parent. As with the above post, I loved how this post made readers feel – it was okay if their baby cat napped.
• Creating A Children’s Timetable – Having a time table or schedule for the kids that they help create has been a key strategy of mine to help the kids become responsible for getting themselves ready for school and kinder in the mornings.

From 2010

• Children’s Routines – This post was inspired by a couple of lovely readers Gin and Sarah. They were interested in routines that I have for kids and any charts that I use.
• 10 Things To Do Before You Go To Bed – I have had such lovely feedback from readers about how using the tips in this post has made their mornings with kids more organised and less stressful.
• Getting Organised At Home – I created this post to act as an introductory guide for Planning With Kids. It takes you through they key tips, templates and processes that we have used to help simplify and add fun to our family life. It is the page you land on when you click on the “Where To Start” tab in the navigation bar. It is one of the most popular pages on the blog.

From 2011

• Budget Basics – Boring topic, but many readers have successful used our budgeting system, or tweaked it and created their own and it has helped them regain control of their finances.
• Challenging Behaviour – This post was also answering a question from a reader. As I note in the post, I am not a child behaviour specialist. My suggestions come from the reading I have done and the practical experience of being a parent over the last 12 years.
• Our Big Family Story – This is not my big family story, but the big family story from a wonderful family I know. Katie kindly shared her journey as a mother of eight beautiful kids.

Thanks for reading Planning With Kids and for the ongoing support of the blog. If you have a particular post from the blog that you like or would like to share the post that you found this blog through I would love to read about it! Feel free to leave a comment below, this will also help new readers find some older posts they may not have read yet.

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Planning With Kids Turns 4!!! is a post from: Planning With Kids

I very much feel I am at a new stage in parenting – one where I don’t have lots of the answers. So I am reading more, talking to other parents about their experiences and listening to my son, as I try to work out how to adjust my parenting to this new stage.

Today I am sharing just 10 of the things I have learnt this year, not only about being in year 7, but about year 7 boys in general.

NB. This list may contain some rather large generalisations – I do realise not all kids are the same and this may not apply to every year 7 boy!

1). Year 7 kids are away from home much, much more. We went from having our son walk with us to school and come home with us after school, to leaving the house at 7.25am and not getting home until at least 4.30pm. I missed him! His siblings also missed him. The first few weeks walking to school were quite odd. His 10 year old brother, didn’t know what to do with himself after school at first either!

2). Year 7 boys are completely capable to get themselves out of bed, get ready, make their lunch and catch public transport to school on their own. I have been impressed at how he took on this on without complaint. There were mornings when I thought to myself, “he is never going to make it out of the house in time”, but he did. He wasn’t late for the entire year! And this is from the most unhurried, dawdling kid you can imagine.

3). When Celia Lashlie author of He’ll Be Ok: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men, said:

Most adolescent boys will do the work when the moment arrives and not before, and no amount of cajoling is likely to have any effect….When he knows it’s up to him and only him whether something does or doesn’t get done, when he’s able to link action with consequence, then he’ll begin to make good decisions for himself.

she was so on the money! I know this may not be the case for all year 7 boys, but we did have many late nights doing assignments which had been left to the last minute.

4). As Lashlie notes, Year 7 boys do learn from consequence. Consequences like not budgeting your pocket money, so being unable to do things you really want to!

5). If I was to mention every single thing our year 7 son did which was annoying, pushing the boundaries and reminding him of the jobs he needs to be doing, there would be no time for enjoying his company.

Very much like when he was a toddler, I am choosing my battles with him. Constant nagging = no listening. And he is quick to let me know if I am falling into the nagging category!

6).Year 7 is much more full on than when I did it. The expectations and work load is considerably higher at my son’s school. He had both mid year and end of the year exams for each subject. Two and sometimes three exams a day, for a week. It is a lot of work for young boys.

7). Giving him space to let him work out his own study habits has been tough for me. I keep trying to remind myself that in the long term, it is much better for him to find out how effective his study habits are by natural consequence.

After the first round of exams, we talked about what he would do differently next time around and he came up with an improved strategy. I asked him to set goals for the marks he wanted to achieve in his end of the year exams. To his credit, he achieved them! However he acknowledged that there was still room for improvement and has a way to further refine his study technique next year.

I can see it is going to be a gradual process for him, but allowing him to work it out himself (with assistance when he asks) not only bodes better for the long term, it has also reduced the clashing we were having over how he was approaching his work load.

8). Year 7 boys lose lots of things! At the start of the school year, we discussed with our son that while we were happy to buy everything he needed for school, if he lost stuff through out the year he was going to have to replace it himself.

Through out the year he lost his calculator (miraculously found two weeks before the end of school), numerous pens, pencils, protractors and various other little things. But he didn’t lose his school hat (very expensive!), school bag or any of his sports uniform he has to change in and out of a couple of times a week.

So in the scheme of things, I think making him fully responsible for his belongings worked!

9). Don’t ask him questions that back him into a corner. If I know he has done something wrong, I need to just state it. Year 7 boys will attempt to cover their tracks where possible and this can involve lying.

We talk frequently about how I am likely to be less upset/cross if he tells the truth, but I have realised there is no point asking a question I know the answer to and expecting to get the right answer!

10). Year 7 boys can be funny, considerate and helpful. Making sure I remember this, appreciate it and let him know I see this side to him is very important.

We have a great laugh together still and the most important thing I have learned this year is to make sure we still talk often and laugh loudly together.

What new things have you learnt as a parent this year?

If you are yet to have a child in secondary school, but the time is getting nearer, you may like to check out my post on Choosing A Secondary School.

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10 Things I Have Learnt About Year 7 And Year 7 Boys This Year is a post from: Planning With Kids