Objectives:The Sample Homeworks for Phase 1 are simple pages containing only three things: a line for the child’s name and date; a few letters; and a few simple shapes. There are actually more objectives for this Phase than there are homework tasks! A few of the objectives contain technical ideas.Remember, you do not need to know or understand – or even read! --the objectives in order to teach your child under the Plan.Why?Because we are not really asking you to do anything very complicated – just help your child work through these simple homeworks, and allow her to learn.It should relieve you to learn that we are relying on your child, not on you!
In any event, here are the objectives for the Toe-In-the-Water Phase (Phase 1):
Help the child become comfortable with the idea of a homework session;
Assess whether the child is ready for regular sessions or instead needs to go through a period dominated by Field Work (see Part 4 of this Chapter, below) with only occasional homework sessions, perhaps once every week or so;
Learn seven simple capital letters -- in the particular case of the Sample Homeworks, B, O, M, S, A, T, and E;
Lay early groundwork for reading;
Learn four basic shapes: circles; squares; rectangles; and triangles;
Basic counting with one-to-one correspondence to twelve;
Recognize the child’s printed name;
Introduce the idea of a calendar date;
Gradually increase the number of homework tasks (e.g., from two rows of three letters to five rows of four letters);
Introduce the key mathematical ideas of “inside,” “included in,” and “bounded;”
Introduce concrete examples of the important abstract idea of symmetry;
Lay the groundwork for the idea of defining mathematical objects by lists of characteristics (a triangle has three sides, etc.);
Introduce the idea that things (circles, squares) can be thought of in more than one way;
Introduce the idea of nested or hierarchical sets (squares are a type of rectangle); and
Help the child become comfortable using a pencil, pen or crayon on the homework sheet as part of the sessions.