At the beginning of a child’s education, we at IvyNue believe that developing strong homework skills is more important even than earning good grades. To look at it any other way is to put the cart before the horse, so to speak. The child must learn the most effective learning strategies in order to absorb information fully and make higher grades.

When you’re in kindergarten and first grade, it’s really easy to succeed. The only thing you have to do is complete your homework. But little kids might not necessarily know the importance of that, so that’s when the role of the parents come in, to really sit down with their child and make sure that they do their homework correctly. It’s all just drills in this point in your life. But just like these drills, if they complete all their homework and they study like they’re supposed to for their very easy exams, they’re able to do very well.

Homework is an opportunity for a child to learn how to complete tasks, focus, and reach goals under their own guidance, without a bell to tell them they are finished or a teacher to watch over their shoulder. If they are going to succeed, it is up to them. This mindset and the skills learned from this mindset will set the child out on the right foot for the rest of what they must do in school and the rest of their lives.

By developing strong homework skills, a child:

• gets creative about finding the information they need to answer questions(turning to textbooks, resource material, or the internet)
• learns to structure their time
• focuses on their work under their own guidance
• gains an appreciation of completing a task on their own
• learns to take responsibility for their time for their education
• will apply this discipline to more complex studying in the future and achieving goals in other aspects of their life

The child will have been exposed to additional information that there was not time to cover in the classroom, and completing homework gives a child an opportunity to put that information to use, to solidify it in their minds. This opportunity, as well as the self-learning skills they have gained, will help them earn good grades in their classes, more easily excel in exams, and place in advanced classes.

You help your child build successful homework skills by:

• designating a time for them to do their homework
• as soon as they are ready, you and the child may designate the time together
• discussing the child’s homework with them
• pointing out how their homework helped them learn something or achieve a goal
• incorporating what they studied into the rest of life, such as asking them about their numbers or certain words
• providing the child with a special, well-equipped area to do their homework
• bonus points if you make it fun
• removing distractions, making homework time a protected time
• never doing your child’s homework

The most important thing that they will learn is:

Working hard is a lot of times much more important than talent.

In the very early years of a child’s education, focus on building those excellent learning skills so they can absorb all the knowledge available to them and be rewarded by the sense of responsibility they gain by being a self-learner. This will create a solid foundation for the child’s education that will last them a lifetime.