What educational materials are needed for an elementary school student?
I think one of the main things is again, there should definately be books. There should be fiction books and story books, and there should probably also be some kind of non-fiction book. Some things that your child is interested in. So if your child is totally in to dinasaurs, have dinasaur books around. You can go through and do those. Magazines are great, if there's kids magazines. Even if your child just like to look at the pictures, so they always constantly have some new information, and some new questions coming into the house. In terms of actual supplies, pens, paper, pencils, obviously. Rulers, protractors, they'll use protractors as they get older. They'll use compasses, things you use to make circles. They'll use those. There's a huge market in educational toys, so some of the things are real simple. You've got your building blocks, and your legos, and some things where it's not even educational so much as it does force your child to think. And kind of think about the consiquences. So if they build out ward from the bottom, with their blocks they're gonna topple over. So, it allows them to kind of tangibly do some thing. Those kinds of toys are great. Little science tools even if they're not really official. Or really scientific, it gives kids a sense of doing some thing. They can talk about, oh we're digging up a fosil. Even if you're kind of cracking open that little fossil egg. It gives them the excitement of doing some thing that they think is really cool. There's a ton of educational games, and I think some of them are great. Some of the leap frog, and the v-techs, and some of the things where you can read to your child. A child can push little bottons and it will talk. There's these little fridge magnets where you can put up a letter. Every time you put up the letter, it will tell you the letter, and it sings a little song about what sound the letter makes. Those little things really are fun, and it gives little kids a sense of I'm playing, and it's actually they're learing at the same time. That's one of the greatest things I think a parent can do for a child is integrate learning and playing. So the child can't even tell the difference between the two.
