Telephone Skills

I used to be a telemarketer for a phone company, and I hated every single minute of it. But the experience did give me the opportunity to see really how poor many people’s telephone skills are. Even now, since I’ve been free from that horrendous job as a telemarketer, I can’t tell you how many times a conversation like this has happened when I call someone.

ME: Hello, may I speak with Melissa?

THEM: Ummm, (short pause) she’s not here.

(silence)

ME: Well, do you know when I might be able to reach her?

THEM: Nope.

(more silence)

ME: Could I leave a message for her?

THEM: I guess.

ME: Can you please have her call Joy at (555) 55…

THEM: (exasperated sigh) Hang on, I don’t have a pencil. (Sound of phone dropping and papers rustling. What seems like several minutes pass, the phone is picked up, and they say…) OK.

ME: Please have her call Joy at (555) 555-5555.

THEM: (just silence)

ME: Did you get it?

THEM: Umm, yeah.

ME: Thanks.

THEM: (quickly hangs up)

Can I just tell you how aggravating that is! I keep wondering who taught—or didn’t teach— that person how to answer a phone.

Having even rudimentary telephone skills is so important, and it really isn’t that difficult to teach your kids how to answer the phone. You don’t need a book, and instructional video, or curriculum; just set aside an hour for practice, and your children should be able to improve their skills dramatically.

Learning Suggestions

After discussing each of the following suggestions with your children, have them practice what they learned. Simply go into another room, get out your cell phone, and call your home phone. Spend some serious time having your children answer the phone to practice what they just learned. You can pretend to be a friend, family member, telemarketer, bill collector, or whatever you want. Just provide your kids with ample opportunity for practicing before they try out their skills in the real world.

• Initial answering phrase: Start by teaching your children what words they should use when they answer the phone, whether it be a simple, “Hello,” or a longer, “Hello, Smith residence.”
• What to say when someone’s not available: Instruct your children to say, “They’re not available right now, may I take a message?” or something similar when that person is unable to take the call. Make sure your children understand why they shouldn’t let someone who calls know that they are home alone.
• Finding out who is calling: You may want to teach you children to first say, “May I ask who’s calling,” before they let the caller know if the person they asked for is available. Depending on your child’s age, they may also be able to give you a heads-up on whether the person who is calling is a dreaded telemarketer. Finding out first who is calling also gives you the opportunity to tell a friend or family member that you’re too busy to talk right now and that you’ll call them back without having to answer the phone yourself.
• What to say when someone is available: When the person being asked for is available, teach your children to say something like, “Yes she is. Just a moment and I’ll get her.” If it takes a while for the person asked for to get to the phone, teach your children to let the caller know that it will be a moment before they get there. You may also want to teach your child to say, “Here she is,” before handing the phone over to you.
• Dealing with telemarketers: Teaching your children to discriminate between real callers and telemarketers is difficult. You should discuss with your child what they should do if they answer a call from a telemarketer.
• Making a phone call: Teach your child how to call someone else. You may want to teach them to introduce themselves when they make a call, such as, “Hello, this is Michael, may I speak with Kyle?”

Just remember that simply talking about these skills, but not practicing them, won’t really do you much good. So get out your cell phone, and call!

Image by Brian Rendel

Understanding Centuries: The 17th Century Was When?

While reading to the kids from our history book today, I came across the term “18th century,” so I asked the kids to which years that was referring. My 5th grade son responded correctly almost immediately, but my 3rd grade daughter just gave me a puzzled and confused look.

Suddenly aware that the direction of our lessons needed to take a small detour, I closed the history book, grabbed my handy-dandy white board and marker, and proceeded to draw a time line on the board so I could explain centuries to my daughter. It took only about 10 minutes of explanation and verbal drill, but she finally grasped the concept.

And with that information fresh in my mind, and since a strong understanding of centuries is an important real-world skill, I was inspired to write up a learning worksheet about centuries.

So if your homeschooling materials don’t include a good explanation of centuries for your kids, or if you’ve struggled with how to explain it, feel free to download this two-page pdf for your use. The first page explains how centuries are defined, and the second page has two sections of written drills where the student is required to write the equivalent century or years for the given information.

Image by gadl

Grocery Shopping and Sales Fliers

We received a Kroger ad flier in the mail today, and when my son was looking it over, he was very impressed that an enormous steak in one of the ads was “…only $4.99! That’s a great price!”

I had to disappoint him when I told him that the ad said it was $4.99 per pound, not per steak.

And that made me realize that it might be a good idea to teach my kids the basics of grocery shopping and weekly sales fliers. It’s definitely an important real world skill that every person should have. So here are some suggestions that work for me.

Learning Suggestions and Activities

GROCERY FLIERS

• Pick up samples of grocery fliers from several different stores. Some stores also post their grocery fliers on their websites.
• Look through the ads with your kids, pointing out and explaining the various ways sales are presented:
  • reduced price
  • reduced price (if you purchase a minimum amount of other groceries)
  • reduced price, but per pound, not per item.
  • reduced price with store loyalty card
    • Talk about how store loyalty programs work.
    • You might even want to pick up some applications for these programs and have your kids practice filling them out!
  • pseudo-reduced price; in other words, it appears at first glance to be a “sale” price, but it’s actually the store’s regular price for that product. (Wal-Mart does this a lot; they list many items in their weekly flier at their regular price. I’ve noticed that sometimes they even mark up their merchandise so they can put the items on “sale” in their flier.)
  • percent off (explain how percent off a higher original price may not be a good deal)
  • “2/$4,” “3 for $10,” etc.
  • “Buy 10, and get $5 off” and similar promotions (this kind of pricing might take a little extra explanation)
• Talk about how some stores may still require you to buy, for example, two items to get the 2/$4 price, although most allow you to buy only one of the items to get the sale price.
• Explain restrictions in sales ads. Look for product-size restrictions or wording such as “on selected varieties” etc.
• Have your kids look through several ads to find different sales prices for the same type of product. Then discuss how you might choose which item to purchase. Do you base it on price alone? Store location? The number of other items you will be purchasing at the store? etc.

COUPONS & DISCOUNT PROGRAMS

• Explain what coupons are (have examples of coupons to look over), and then discuss the following:
  • How coupons actually work. For example:
    • the manufacturer pays the store the amount the product was discounted
    • the store simply discounts the product for in-store coupons
  • The difference between manufacturer’s coupons and store coupons. Explain how you can often use both types of coupons on the same product to save even more money.
  • Where you can obtain coupons. (e.g. newspapers, magazines, online, etc.)
  • Coupon expiration dates.
  • The various discount methods on coupons such as “Save $.25 on one,” or “Save $1 on two”
  • Coupon doubling/tripling.
• If you get really ambitious, you can explain how stores such as CVS and Walgreens work. (Their weekly fliers and discount programs are much more complicated than other stores.)

COMPARISON SHOPPING

• Take your kids shopping with you and have them help you comparison shop.
• Give your kids a calculator and teach them how to figure unit pricing.
  • To figure the COST PER UNIT, have them do the following:
    • type in the total cost of the item
      
    • divide by the size of the package (such as number of ounces).
  • It’s easy to remember how to figure unit pricing if you think of it as a simple division problem:
    • Cost/Unit—read as “Cost Per Unit”—reminds you always to type the total cost first, then divide by the unit (ounces, pounds, etc.)
• Talk about how you decide the size of package to purchase. For example, you could base it on:
  • the unit pricing
  • how perishable the item is
  • amount of storage in your pantry
  • how much of the item you need to use for planned meals

Image by ratterrell

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Filling Out Forms (or “How Many Different Ways Can I Write My Name?”)

Our children will fill out hundreds of forms throughout their lives. It only follows that practicing this necessary (although tedious) skill can ease the process in the future and hopefully prevent needless do-overs. I mean, how many times have you started to fill out a form, only to realize that you’ve been filling it out incorrectly? I know I have done that several times.

Forms and applications require names, birth dates, and addresses to be written in dozens of different ways. You can prepare your children for this real-world skill by introducing them to a variety of forms and actually having actually practice filling them out.

Teaching Suggestions and Resources

• Teach your children how to look over a form first, before filling anything out. Have them check for directions such as “complete in blue or black ink” or “print only.” Also have them take note of any parts that they do not need to fill out, such as sections that say things like “office use only.”

• Have your children use this worksheet to practice filling in their name and birth date in various ways.

• Collect forms from around your community and have your children fill out the name, birth date, and address portions. Here are some ideas for some forms you might like to collect:

• library card applications
• forms at the post office (i.e. change of address, mail forwarding, etc.)
• tax forms
• applications for grocery savings cards (like Kroger, CVS, etc.)
• DMV forms
• order forms (such as mail order catalogs)
• magazine subscription cards (found in the magazines you have at home)

A Child’s Lesson in Firearms

Although I’ve never shot a gun in my life, I’ve always wanted to know exactly how they work; firearm terminology (such as 9mm, .40 caliber, cartridges/bullets/casings, etc.) was also lost on me.

So I decided I’d erase my ignorance about firearms by doing a little reading—and teaching my kids about them at the same time. After all, guns are mentioned constantly on the news and in movies, so learning a little bit about guns seems to me to be a worthwhile endeavor.

I’ve listed below some of the resources that we have and will be using in our study of firearms.

Suggested Activities and Resources

• Read an encyclopedia entry about guns. We read Grolier’s The New Book of Knowledge (copyright 1985) which has a great article about firearms under “Guns and Ammunition.” It covered the subject in a very thorough and understandable manner.
• Visit How Stuff Works to read their excellent articles about guns:
  • “How Flintlock Guns Work” is not just about the flintlock; it covers the matchlock and percussion cap as well. This is probably the first of the How Stuff Works article you’d need to read, as it covers a lot of basic information.
  • “How Shotguns Work”
  • “How Revolvers Work”
  • “How Machine Guns Work”
  • “How Rocket-Propelled Grenades Work”
• Pick up a gun encyclopedia from the book store or your local library. The one we picked up at Half Price Books, Encyclopedia of Rifles & Handguns: A Comprehensive Guide to Firearms, has numerous helpful diagrams and photographs.
• Do some hands-on with firearms if you have access to them. I’m not suggesting you have your kids do any shooting, but letting them see guns in person, even handle them, will give them a better understanding—and appreciation—for firearms. It may also serve to remove the “curiosity” instinct which causes some kids to play with guns simply because they’ve never seen one in “real life” before.
• Study gun safety. Here are some good online resources that can help.
  • Kids Health
  • Gun Safety from the FBI
  • American Derringer

Image by barjack

Prevent Spelling Confusion with the Phonetic Alphabet

How many times have you misunderstood someone when they spelled a word, a name, or a VIN or serial number over the phone? P’s sounded like B’s, S’s sounded like X’s, and so on.

To prevent confusion in situations like this, customer service agents are often trained to use a spelling alphabet to make them better understood over the phone when they have to read off a series of letters to a customer. The phonetic alphabet is also used in law enforcement, aviation, and other industries that use radio communications.

It only stands to reason that knowing a phonetic alphabet might make it that much easier for your kids to make themselves clearly understood if they find themselves in a similar situation, having to spell out a word, name, or series of letters, especially over the phone.

Suggested Activities and Resources

• First, you need to choose which alphabet you’re going to teach. There are several variations, among which are the official NATO phonetic alphabet and the Western Union Phonetic Alphabet. Choose the one that works best for you. If these options don’t suit you, you can go here for dozens more spelling alphabets.

  • NATO Phonetic Alphabet

    • Alpha
    • Bravo
    • Charlie
    • Delta
    • Echo
    • Foxtrot
    • Golf
    • Hotel
    • India
    • Juliet
    • Kilo
    • Lima
    • Mike
    • November
    • Oscar
    • Papa
    • Quebec
    • Romeo
    • Sierra
    • Tango
    • Uniform
    • Victor
    • Whiskey
    • X-ray
    • Yankee
    • Zulu

  • Western Union Phonetic Alphabet

    • Adams
    • Boston
    • Chicago
    • Denver
    • Easy
    • Frank
    • George
    • Henry
    • Ida
    • John
    • King
    • Lincoln
    • Mary
    • New York
    • Ocean
    • Peter
    • Queen
    • Roger
    • Sugar
    • Thomas
    • Union
    • Victor
    • William
    • X-ray
    • Young
    • Zero

• Don’t try to teach the entire phonetic alphabet in one sitting. Instead, take a few letters at a time and practice them with your kids. You might even like to make flashcards, with the letter on one side, and the word on the opposite side.
• When you’re traveling in the car, have your kids practice saying license plates using the phonetic alphabet.
• Have your kids spell out words from their spelling lists using the phonetic alphabet.

Image by Hometown Invasion Tour

Idioms

One could argue that idioms falls under the umbrella of the three R’s, but in reality, idioms are generally taught—if at all—haphazardly in regular curriculum.

Yet understanding idioms is so important. And it’s not because our children need to be taught how to use idioms in their daily speech; idioms are in such great use by society in general that the ability to understand idioms is essential to being able to comprehend the meaning of what is being communicated.

So, how do you teach idioms?

Obviously, if you’re “on your toes” throughout the day, you can just explain idioms as they appear in daily speech, on television, or in books. But if you’d like a more formal approach, I’ve listed a few resources and activities below that you might like to “try on for size.”

Suggested Resources and Activities

• Find a resource for idioms:
  • Pick up Scholastic’s Dictionary of Idioms by Marvin Terban, a great little text that is written on a kid’s level. It explains more than 600 phrases, sayings, and expressions, the vast majority of which are in everyday usage, not obsolete idioms. This book does a really good job explaining the meaning as well as the origin of each idiom.
  • Look through idiom resources on the web. The following sites have idiom lists that are browsable:
    • The Idiom Site
    • Idiom Idiot
    • Using English
• Choose which idioms you want to study throughout the school year, and then introduce them to your kids on a regular basis.
  • When you introduce a new idiom, encourage your kids to use that idiom sometime throughout the day/week/month.
  • You could even make a game of it and award a “prize” to the first person to appropriately use the idiom in their speech.
• Utilize these interactive sites, which have idiom games and learning activities that your kids can do on their own.
  • FunBrain
  • Eye on Idioms
  • Quiz Tree

Thirteen Great Thoughts About Education [Second Edition]

1. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”~Plutarch

2. “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” ~Herbert Spencer

3. “Education is too important to be left solely to educators.” ~Francis Keppel

4. “Education: Being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t. It’s knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it’s knowing how to use the information once you get it.” ~William Feather

5. “When asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, “As much as the living are to the dead.” ~Diogenes Laertius (fl. 2nd century)

6. “I’ve never let my school interfere with my education.” ~Mark Twain

7. “Education has for its object the formation of character.” ~Herbert Spencer

8. “What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out.” ~John Holt

9. “To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

10. ” He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever.” ~Chinese proverb

11. “Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune.” ~Jim Rohn

12. “Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.” ~Jean Jacques Rousseau

13. “The question is not,—how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education—but how much does he care?” ~Charlotte Mason

Check out other great T13’s here.

WFMW: Safety & First Aid

It’s never too early to teach our kids some basic safety rules and first aid.

My kids and I are officially beginning our study of first aid this week since our science curriculum for the year is already done. The basic text we’re using is a Community First Aid & Safety manual from the American Red Cross that I picked up for free somewhere. We won’t be reading over each and every word in the text we’re using; instead I’ll be summarizing a lot of the material to make it applicable to my kids and their abilities.

Suggested Activities and Resources.

• Make a home first aid kit. Have your kids help you collect all the supplies to put a home first aid kit together. (Please note that the use of syrup of ipecac is no longer recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics). Here are some of the items you might consider including in your kit:
  • bandages
  • gauze squares
  • adhesive tape
  • thermometer
  • ice pack
  • hydrogen peroxide
  • rubbing alcohol
  • cotton balls
  • scissors
  • soap
  • tweezers
  • cotton balls
  • disposable gloves
  • elastic bandage
  • paper cups
  • calamine lotion
  • activated charcoal
  • first aid information (such as a reference card)
• Obtain a good first aid guide from the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association. You can probably find used copies of these at a large used book store like Half-Price Books. Use the guide as your “curriculum.”
• Check out your local library for some good books on first aid and safety. The youth nonfiction section will likely have several good books about safety and first aid written at a child’s level. Although not an exhaustive list, here are some subjects that would be good to look up and study with your kids:
  • fire safety
  • bike safety
  • water safety
  • stranger safety
  • gun safety
  • first aid, especially with regard to the following emergencies:
    • Head injuries
    • Broken bones
    • Burns
    • Bleeding
    • Choking
    • Lack of breathing/heart attacks
• Have your kids attend a first aid class. Check with your local community center, hospital, or school to find out where such classes might be offered.
• Utilize the internet for some free safety and first aid information. Here are some sites with good information you might like to check out:
  • Kids Health
  • Injury Free
  • American Academy of Pediatrics

Visit Rocks in My Dryer to read other great “Works For Me Wednesday” tips.

Image by 8lettersuk

A Cooking Tour

Can your child identify and properly use a garlic press or a double broiler, or understand the difference between dicing and mincing, or demonstrate what it means to “fold” in an egg.Truth be told, these kitchen skills aren’t learned through osmosis, and unfortunately, if kids aren’t given the opportunity to cook throughout their childhood, or if they don’t at least take some kind of home economics/cooking class, they might arrive at adulthood without knowing the first thing about cooking.

And think about the financial ramifications of not knowing how cook. If a person can’t cook, they’re more likely to eat out a lot and/or purchase convenience foods that aren’t exactly very healthy.

Obviously, teaching your children how to cook can really have a great impact on their future. So how about giving your kids a good tour of the kitchen. I’m not just talking pots and pans and other cooking implement, but also various cooking terms and methods that are regularly seen in basic recipes.

Suggested Learning Activities.

• Pick up a good children’s cookbook and read it with your kids. Not cover-to-cover, but take a good look at the information usually included at the beginning of quality children’s cookbooks. Often, the authors will illustrate various cooking implements and techniques in an easy-to-understand format. So take a little time and study those pages with your children.
• Take a tour of your own kitchen. Open that messy utensil drawer, pull out some long-forgotten utensils, and talk about how each of them is used.
• Look through the cookbook and discuss the various cooking terms. Do a little grammar lesson in the process and have your child identify all the verbs in the recipe (like stir, broil, saute, etc.), then discuss each technique. You might want to make a set of flashcards with the technique on one side and a simple definition on the other side. Your kids can review the cards until they have a good grasp of the definitions.
• Have your kids cook on a regular basis. This is something we started doing recently and the entire family has benefited greatly from it.
• Participate in cooking classes with a local 4-H club or some similar organization in your area. Participation is usually free or very low cost, and your kids can learn a lot of great information about cooking by participating.
• Learn the science of cooking at this informative, kid-friendly site.

Suggested Resources. There are many high-quality children’s cookbooks out there, but these two books are what we have been using, and they have been more than adequate for our needs. We would recommend both.

New Junior Cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens)

Cooking for Beginners (Usborne)

Kids Cuisine: Great blog all about cooking for kids, and cooking with kids. Check out this post about the specifics of how kids can help with cooking at different ages.

Food Network has some good step-by-step “Kid-friendly Cooking Demos” that can help you teach your kids how to:

• dredge bread
• make cookie logs
• make sushi
• form baguettes & pizza
• ice a cake