What kind of teaching materials is 7A?
Kumon Japanese 7A is a teaching material that begins in early childhood. Math starts from 6A and English from 3A, so it is positioned for small children who cannot start English or math yet to start learning from 7A or 8A in Japanese.
Next, let's take a look at the list of Kumon Japanese language materials.
Through learning to say "hiragana words" as words, we will increase the students' awareness of the letters of each word unit. Vocabulary is increased with a focus on familiar nouns.
Children do not recognize letters at a young age. They try to recognize sounds and objects by associating them with sounds from conversations with their parents. Kumon Japanese 7A materials go one step further and provide training to connect objects and sounds with letters.
The image of the printouts is shown in the figure below. It may be similar to flashcards.
At what age are these materials studied?
In most cases, the material is learned at the age of 3 or 4, at the time of enrollment.
In 7A, we explained that this is the stage of "connecting objects and sounds with letters. Therefore, a child who learns 7A materials cannot understand the materials unless he or she can connect "objects and sounds" to some extent. When an adult says "apple," the child needs to know what an "apple" is to some extent.
In other words, the time to start the 7A materials is when the language is beginning to emerge.
And for many schools, the minimum age to start Kumon is 3 years old, because they have "Baby Kumon" for babies until the age of 2. That is why many families who want to start Kumon at a young age start with 7A as a starting point for their children.
What are the key points of attack?
The material at this time takes the form of reading aloud the printed words with the parent. So for the child, it is not that different from a picture book and will not be a big burden in many cases.
If anyone should feel stressed at this time, it is the parents.
At Kumon, homework is done every day. Although the number of printouts per day may be increased or decreased depending on the child's motivation and progress, the basic rule of Kumon is that children study at home every day. However, a 3- or 4-year-old child will not voluntarily try to do Kumon every day. In order for them to learn a little bit each day, parents need to encourage them to do so every day.
However, even without Kumon, there are situations in parenting that can be frustrating. It was past 8:00 p.m. when I was flabbergasted. Tomorrow is the day you go to Kumon class, so you have to finish your homework. You are in a hurry to tell your child to do Kumon, but he or she doesn't start Kumon at all. In these situations, we inevitably put pressure on our children to do Kumon. If this pressure builds up, the child will realize that the parents get angry when they talk about Kumon, and they will naturally start to dislike Kumon.
Also, if the child is a slow learner, he or she may not be able to move forward at all from this point.
In Kumon, there is a standard for each material that says, "If you can do it in a certain number of minutes, you can move on to the next material. However, there are many small children who do not want to solve problems as fast as possible in the first place. Therefore, they may get tired of repeating the same material over and over without being able to clear the material around 7A.
Parents rushing their children through this will only cause stress. If the classroom teacher does not seem to have anything to draw out to work with the child, continuing Kumon at that stage will not yield good results. It would be better to withdraw from the class and consider resuming when the child is a little older.
What changes have you seen in your child by finishing Kumon 7A?
The following is a list of changes that we have seen as a result of completing Kumon Japanese 7A.
The most noticeable change was the recognition of language.
They had read picture books and seen the Aieo chart before. However, there was not much indication that he was looking at the letters. When she saw the illustrations on the aieo chart, she would say, "Ice cream! Strawberries! but they did not respond to the letters "a" and "i." In Kumon Japanese 7A, they were able to read the letters "a," "b," "c," "d," and "e.
In Kumon Japanese 7A, the illustrations with letters and the pages with only letters are read alternately. Therefore, the child's attention is drawn to the letters as well. It is true that if pictures and text are side by side like in a picture book, it is natural that young children's eyes will gravitate toward the pictures. Kumon seems to have created an opportunity to draw children's attention to letters.
As soon as they became aware of letters, the picture books they wanted to read changed. His interest shifted from books with appealing pictures to books about letters. With this shift, I began to be able to read picture books in genres such as "words beginning with 'a'" and to create opportunities to see words such as "yawn," for example, which is surprisingly difficult to see naturally in everyday life.
I had felt that it was difficult to bring a child from the world of pictures and sounds to the world of letters, but Kumon has changed my child's focus in just one month. Kumon has changed my child's focus in just one month.