Ok, if you have read even one post on this blog, you know that I love to make learning fun. Sometimes this is difficult for my daughter. She hates to repeat. And I mean, not just a little grumble, “Mom, I’ve already done this lesson.”

I’m talking about an all-out war, total educational shut down, dig her heels in, “I am not repeating this even if it kills me” stubborn refusal!!

If I want to keep things moving forward, I have to depend on the curriculum we use, Time4Learning, to keep repetition to a minimum and mostly invisible. One the ways that they accomplish this is to present the same material in different formats, and different appearances so that it doesn’t look like repetition.

Another of the most effective ways I have found to have my daughter review information without it looking like a useless, mindless repetition is to take the information from a lesson and apply it to another activity. This allows her to learn a piece of information, and then use that information, and pack down that information, by having to use that information in another way.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about. If she learns spelling words in a lesson, there is just no way I am going to get her to write them 3-5 times. Yet I know that she needs to repeat the words if she has any hope of remembering them. If I can get her to use those words in a game, or in a piece of writing immediately, then she stands a better chance of remembering how to spell those words next week, or next year.

Games are great for other things besides remembering. Anything that causes your child to use their brain, to exercise those muscles, so to speak, is good for their education. Have you ever heard of a game called Hig Pig? Hig Pig online is a fun riddle game that makes the student think of rhyming one syllable words to answer a riddle. Here is an example: the riddle is “a sweet for a carnivore”, the answer is “meat treat”. If your child is a little older, or prepared for more complex riddles and words, there is also an online game called Higgy Piggies, which uses 2 syllable words.

The riddle makes the child not only find rhyming words, but also rhyming words that solve the riddle. This type of brain exercise improves memory, asks the child to think outside of a box, and gives them a sense of accomplishment when they can get the answer right. If you asked the child to then spell the two words, you have accomplished a great deal of mental exercise wrapped up in a bit of fun.

If these don’t look like something your child would like why not try Word Search online? You can produce puzzles from your child’s spelling list, or reading vocabulary, or even math words. Word search helps your child learn to spell and recognize a word among many letters. It helps them focus, and if your child is anything like mine, they will be better at word searches than you are very quickly!