What kind of material is Kumon Japanese 5A?
Let's understand what you will learn in Kumon Japanese 5A.
Check the image of Kumon Japanese 5A teaching materials
The Kumon Japanese 5A teaching materials are as follows.
In the first half, you will see three-word sentences, and in the second half, you will see picture book-like sentences. The final goal is to reach a place where you will be able to read several coherent stories.
Check the explanations of the Kumon formula
Next, let's check the explanations in the list of Kumon Japanese language materials.
You will be able to read aloud Hiragana sentences of about 3 to 6 phrases smoothly. You should be able to read 10 pieces of Japanese aloud on your own. As a step toward self-study, students will be able to check what they have read on their own.
The key point is "to be able to read 10 pages aloud by themselves." If your child has progressed to 5A, he or she may have heard more difficult sentences when you read to them. However, when it comes to being able to read aloud on their own, this requires a different kind of ability.
Check the positioning of 5A in Kumon Japanese as a whole.
Let's also check the positioning of 5A.
It is right in the middle of the Kumon materials for young children, and for families who have started Kumon from around the age of 3, it is probably time to start getting used to Kumon.
At what age are these materials studied?
Even for children who started Kumon at the age of 3 or 4, things often go smoothly up to this point. The reason for this lies in the way Kumon separates grades.
Kumon basically does not state age guidelines by grade. However, each grade from grade 1 to grade 3 corresponds to nine letters of the alphabet from A to I. If we follow the same procedure, going backwards from 2A to 5 years old, and 3A to 4 years old, the 5A is just the difficulty level of the 2-year-old guideline.
Children under 2 years old will join "baby kumon" instead of the regular Kumon system. So in most cases, the minimum age to start Kumon is 3 years old, and it is often a thumping progression up to 5A.
Conversely, a 3-year-old child will be learning age-appropriate material for the first time here. It is at 5A that the material starts to feel a little more difficult.
What is the key to success?
Families that have started Kumon at an early age are likely to have put some effort into reading to their children. 5A will eventually cover a small story, so familiarity with picture books makes a big difference.
On top of that, what makes it different from reading aloud is that the child has to read aloud himself.
In particular, three-word sentences are a surprisingly big obstacle. This is because there are not many opportunities to say three-word sentences in daily conversation. For example, we may say "omizu kudasai," but it is difficult to say "tsumetai omizu kudasai," in a conversation with a child. The concept of adjectives and particles is also more likely to be introduced, so some children may feel a little difficulty in this area.
From a parent's point of view, it may seem that after 7A and 6A have progressed smoothly, it is difficult to make progress with the material in 5A. When the material is difficult, the child's motivation tends to decrease. This is probably the first area where some people quit Kumon as a result of frustration and frustration being passed on to the child.
First of all, it is important to recognize that 5A is where things can get a little difficult for the child. This is a time when progress is slow and children's motivation can easily wane, but this is an obstacle that all children will encounter sooner or later in Kumon.
It is also important to intentionally increase the number of three- and four-word sentences in daily conversation. Once children are able to understand this area, their vocabulary, if not their words, will be much closer to the number of words in a single sentence spoken by adults in daily conversation. This will allow them to become accustomed to longer sentences naturally in their daily lives.
Three- and four-word sentences are rarely used in daily conversation. By helping them learn these sentences in their daily conversations, we believe that they will be able to help themselves to the 5A material.