Helping Your Kids Learn How to Study

One goal of homeschooling is independent study. This means that we aim to make sure that more than spoon-feeding our children with information we teach them how to find the information and how to retain the information.

I learned in a conference in OD that most adults use index cards to help them learn. What they normally do is write a term they need to remember on one side, then they put a definition on another side. This is mildly effective. Researchers have found a more effective way of studying, and this is something Andrea and I have been using these past 3 months. So far I am thrilled, by how useful it's been and so I'm sharing them with you.

CREATING THE CARDS:

We write the terms on one side, I say WE because at the beginning,I would write the

terms, but, now I started making her write the terms herself to practice spelling and for better retention.

I normally do this at the end of each topic. I ask her to go through her textbook and write down the things which she thinks are important to remember. If she misses some things, I point her attention to it.

I then ask her "What questions can you ask to give you the answer ______" and she comes up with as many questions as possible. We write those questions on the other side of the 3x5 index card.

REVIEWING WITH THE CARDS:

When we are reviewing, I either give her a term, and she will give me a question or I ask her the questions we wrote and she will tell me what I'm referring to.

At times, we would have quiz bees using the card. I would have her and her dad or her and her yaya try to answer the questions.

COLOR CODING: 

Andrea recommended using symbols to identify the cards. We came up with this legend. We put those symbols to differentiate the cards per subject.

STORING THE CARDS:

I bought this pouch to store the cards while travelling. This means, we can review while waiting at the doctor's office for example. At home though, it would be nice to have a bigger index card holder to store all the index cards.