P&K Insider

Why is it that my son is a perfect student for his actual teacher and a less than enthusiastic one for his own mother? Why?

I severely doubt that he whined when his kindergarten teachers asked him a math question or asked him to recite a few lines in a book. Man, that drives me crazy!

Despite this initial resistance, my son has enjoyed his Super Why activity sheets for the past few days. I love it because it’s a no-brainer for me. My kids watch a 30-minute episode of Super Why and then we have some fun with the activity sheets I download directly from from the PBS web site.  Suddenly I have a 45-minute lesson plan. This is especially important to me during the summer months when I don’t want to have my children’s brains turn to mush! (Read for background)

If you’re not familiar with the four Super Why characters, let me provide a quick overview.

Alpha Pig has “Alphabet Power,” Wonder Red has “Word Power,” Princess Presto has “Spelling Power,” Super Why has the “Power to Read.” As the creator of this show shared, they look at the storyline as a scaffolding of sorts - start with the basic reading literacy stuff (letters) and gradually implement skills that lead to reading.

Our show of focus is “The Three Little Pigs,” but the PBS site has activity examples for  Super Why episodes 101 - 124.

Day 1 activities focused on Alpha Pig - my 6-year-old son easily plowed through these and my 4-year-old daughter did quite well.We played a game of bingo to reinforce letter recognition and colored in the alphabet in another activity.

As an author of a siblings book, part of this experiment also discover if siblings can take part in this program together. I did have to set some ground rules. For instance: this is not a race; you are not allowed to shout out “This is too easy/hard”; take pride in your work and HAVE FUN. So far, I’d rate this PBS learning with TV experiment a success in the siblings department.

Day 2 was all about Wonder Red. The activity sheets directly corrolate with the Super Why episode we are watching so there is some familiarity as we tackle each sheet. In this one, they had to work with the sound “all” and how that sound changes when you add letters in front of it: “ball”, “tall”

This proved a little more challenging for my daughter but she was easily distracted by the fact we were dealing with her favorite female character from the series.

Next, we’re all about Princess Pesto. Stay tuned.