Homework Woes: Teaching my 5-Year-Old

I always wake up early every morning so that I can get my son ready for school, and even if I am busy when he gets home, I take a moment to see what he has done on his homework so that any errors can be corrected. I will also review his progress in his classes and discuss any challenges he may be facing. I will always try to give him my best advice and support him in any way I can.

Since I had the first semester exam last week, I had to stay at school through the whole week. And I live very far from school, so in order to avoid arriving late to school, I decided to stay at school.

When I returned to my house, I tried to catch up on what my son has been doing in school, and then I noticed he still had problems spelling. He has just begun a new class, Nursery 2, also known as pre-kindergarten.

Topics such as advanced mathematics, quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning, and spelling were introduced, and they were changed in ways I expected. However, one thing I noticed with my son is that sometimes he prefers to be lazy when it comes to his schoolwork. Nevertheless, he has been doing his best to learn and putting effort into learning.

His class teacher complained bitterly this morning that I wasn't helping him and it was making her work harder. I replied, asking if it was about his spelling, and she replied that it was. I apologized to her and told her that I was doing my best, but that we were not seeing the desired result yet.

She explained that if she sits with him and asks him to spell certain words, he would spell them correctly, but when she isn't supervising, he ends up spelling everything wrong. I am concerned about his spelling, and I don't know what I can do to help him master it.

It reminds me of the day he was about to start school for the first time, he was about to begin Nursery one, and in accordance with the school policy, a child has to take a placement test before being placed in a class so the school's management can ensure that the child is appropriate for the class.

With the help of the teacher who was asked to invigilate the test, my son passed the test. After the test, she called me and told me that I had to work very hard on him and that she assisted him during the test, but she knew that if he worked on it, he would get better quickly.

With the hope that taking him through a home lesson would help him improve, I took her advice and went to a stationery store, a marker board, and a learning chart. I arrived home ready to start the lesson. We started the lesson, and to my surprise, he was very motivated and engaged.

His progress eventually improved after the session resumed; he was able to write his number beyond 1-10, he could recognize and write his letters, he could say two-letter words, and he was able to count. He was able to understand the concept of addition and subtraction; he could count to 10, and he was able to recognize and name colors. He was even able to draw basic shapes.

I was happy that he was able to do all those things at last after trying to make him understand the concept of it all for so long.

Towards the end of the last session in his previous class, backward reading of the alphabet and counting of numbers were introduced.!

To ensure he wouldn't get lost while doing his homework, I tried my best to constantly work with him on it. He doesn't appear to have completely understood it yet, though.

I got pissed off some weeks while teaching him his homework, still on the backward counting of numbers. I tried to explain the concept to him, but he couldn't follow. Finally, I ordered him to bring down the chart I had bought for him to practice counting backward. After counting from the chart, he still didn't understand, so I lost all patience and gave him a harsh spanking.

Another thing he does is take forever to write his numbers when he is asked to do so. It's just annoying since he knows how to count and write but he just decides to spend all day writing.

My son's class teacher is currently complaining about his spelling ability. I have no idea what to do at this point and wondered if any mothers could offer suggestions. Does anyone have any advice on how to help him with his spelling? Maybe there are some activities I can do with him at home to help him improve his skills. I'm also open to any advice on how to motivate him.

There are times when I wonder if he just needs time and will catch up later. The funny thing is that he knows a lot of these things, yet he acts like someone who does not comprehend what he should write.

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