Factual knowledge, also known as background knowledge, can make the difference from not having a clue what you have read to comprehending and completely understanding what you have read.
The Learning Blog 👋
4th of July Family Activities
The 4th of July is perfect for outside activities in your backyard, like a BBQ. Some of our favorite activities include relay races and obstacle courses. You might not realize it, but obstacle courses and relay races improve several areas of learning, including laterality, directionality, visual memory, and auditory memory. These family activities target the mind-body connection, which…
How to Create a Daily Schedule for Kids (FREE Printable)
School’s out, and summer is here! Pool parties, backyard barbeques, days at the river… and summer learning loss! Hold up. Wait. Let’s put a stop to the summer learning loss, but let’s keep the good stuff. Kids often lose much of what they learned from the school year over the summer. This is because most…
Vocabulary and Reading: The Connection
How are vocabulary and reading connected? To understand what you have read, you need to know the meaning of the words you are reading. Research tells us that vocabulary knowledge, including both oral and written vocabulary, is critically important for a child’s success in school (Kamil et al., 2008). That being said, each person has…
What is Reading Fluency?
Reading Fluency Definition Reading fluency is the ability to read smoothly, easily, and quickly. Good readers can read words automatically without having to sound out each syllable (also known as decoding). In other words, you don’t have to spend a lot of effort and attention on the mechanics of reading. Reading becomes easy. Word recognition…
Summer Learning Loss: How to Prevent the Summer Slide
4 Steps to Stop Summer Learning Loss Kids often lose much of what they learned from the school year over the summer. This is because most of the time, during the summer, we don’t spend much time stimulating the brain and keeping them active. It’s typical for kids to lose between two and four months…
Mind-Body Connection: Movement and Learning
How does the mind-body connection affect overall learning skills? Most of us don’t think about learning skills in conjunction with the mind-body connection and movement. However, the mind-body connection and movement are very important to your ability to learn and master reading skills. The brain and body work together as a machine, one designed to…
Executive Function and Reading
“If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail.”– Benjamin Franklin Executive function is all about planning and organizing. It’s also your ability to strategize and pay attention to and remember details. Executive function also involves flexible thinking. This is used when you have an assignment, project, or problem that can be done in several…
Valentine’s Day Activities for Kids
Holidays like Valentine’s Day are perfect for reinforcing learning skills with activities, crafts, and games for kids. It is one of our favorite days of the year. Valentine’s Day is a time of love and reflection on our family relationships and friends. We have 3 simple activities that you can do with your kids this…
Phonemic Awareness and Reading
What is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds – phonemes – in spoken words. A phoneme is a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another, for example, /b/, /k/, and /s/ in the words bat, cat, and sat. Phonemic awareness is critical to reading and…
