Self-Made Teaching Aid

Teaching Parents How to Make Self-Made Teaching Aids for their Children

Introduction

Rationale for Project

Manipulatives are teaching tools that are frequently used by parents and teachers to engage children in hands-on learning. They can be used to introduce, practice, or remediate a concept. As preschool teachers, we are constantly developing self-made teaching aids for the children. These teaching aids are then placed in learning centres where it allows children to explore and learn independently during their learning centre time. Parents on the other hand would purchase manipulatives from stores for their children. However, families from the lower income group may not be able to afford some of these manipulatives. Although loaning of these

Often, children from these families are observed to have poor academic achievements in school due to the lack of resources available for academic success. Parents do not have money to purchase these resources for their children to explore at home. Furthermore, majority of the parents are also not equipped with the knowledge of which kind of manipulatives are beneficial and suitable for their children’s learning.

‘Make It Your Own Teaching Aid’ is a collaboration between parents, teachers and the community in helping parents develop self-made teaching aids with recycled materials for the children. For the contributions of the recycled materials used in making these self made teaching aid, we will be approaching ‘Clean and Green Singapore (CGS)’ for their support. Parents of all children will also be approached to contribute any recycled materials from home. With the contribution of these resources, teachers will then be able to generate ideas in creating useful self-made teaching aids for the children within the learning centre of the class. An open classroom week would be organized for parents to visit the classroom as and when they like during school hours of the week to get a general idea on the benefits of using these teaching aids. From there, parents would be able to view and determine if the self-made teaching aid are beneficial for their children’s learning

Parental involvement through active participation in supporting children during their school activities as well as working closely with their children at home was the emphasis on this article. They also mentioned that parents should take part in workshop trainings conducted by schools, to learn, construct and practice and then apply it onto their children. In another article, it also mentioned that parents need to be given educational support so that they can help in their children’s learning (Powell, 2003). According to the family system theory, where it states the use of messages and rules to shape members, it shows that as educators, we can make a difference by sharing information and letting parents know that they are capable of their child’s learning development (Morgaine,