When we think of the education of a school-aged child, we are inclined to think about the work that teachers do with their students. However, parents have a vital role in teaching their children even after they enter school: They remain a vital resource for their children in terms of helping them to acquire the skills that they will need to succeed academically. Which skills parents can be most instrumental in helping their children acquire vary from one age to the next, for different development stages of a child's life offer windows into different types of learning. For the parent of a child between five and seven years of age, one of the most important sets of skills that the two can work on together is language and literacy development. This paper examines some of the ways in which parents can help their just-school-aged children acquire important linguistic skills and habits.
It should be noted at the beginning of this discussion that while there are certain skills that should be developed during this entire period, there are also differences in how parents should approach working with five-year-olds, six-year-olds, and seven-year-olds. This paper was written with the help of a mother of four children, ages eight months, three years five years and seven years. Below is her assessment of some of the key differences in working with her seven-year-old and five-year-old daughters.
Two years' difference doesn't seem like a lot to us because we're adults, and our understanding of the world probably hasn't changed all that much in the last two years. But for a child, two years is a tremendous amount of time - for a five-year-old, that's nearly half of her life again. The way I work with my five-year-old is very different from the way in which I work with my seven-year-old - even though I'm still working with both of them on what might generally be called basic reading skills.
With my younger daughter, I'm just working on teachin...