We have been covering "the basics" the first few weeks to review what your child may or may not have learned prior to kindergarten. Included in these basics are a general study of all the letters, shapes, and color words. Of course, throughout the year we will be covering these areas in much more depth as we continue adding more content and rigor across all the subjects. Use every opportunity at home to discuss with your children what they have learned, and to ask questions about these things we are learning in the classroom in order to continue the conversations and extend the learning outside of the classroom.
Another great idea for at-home extensions: writing their names. Try having them write their name using a variety of techniques and/or writing utensils to keep them engaged and excited about improving their handwriting (i.e. pencil, markers, paint, shaving cream... the latter always proves to be a kid-favorite!) Make sure your little one can also name all of the letters in the alphabet. If they are having trouble with this, try focusing on just the letters in their name at first since they are constantly exposed to these on a daily basis. I've learned that minor successes like this are almost always followed by major successes; a little boost in their confidence can go a really long way.
Another skill we are focusing on with the start of our new reading curriculum is rhyming. As you might have noticed on the progress reports that went home last week, we have been working on identifying rhyming words, as well as producing word(s) that rhymes with a given word(s).
(i.e. Which of the following rhymes with cat: can, bat, boy? Tell me another word that rhymes with cat.)
This is another thing that takes very little to no time at all to practice at home, and can even be practiced by pointing out the rhymes in your favorite song on the radio!
As I previously mentioned, we are in the middle of a brief overview of all the letters of the alphabet during these first few weeks of our reading curriculum. Note that this is a very brief review, covering one or two letters in a single day. If your little one is having a hard time keeping up with all of these, rest assured they will be getting much more practice with all of the letters over the weeks to come. Next week we will start having a Letter of the Week, starting with letter 'Mm'. We will be doing a week-long letter study of each of the 26 letters, focusing on letter formation, letter sounds, words that start with/end with/contain the letter, etc.
To help the Little Learners become more familiar with each letter, we will be doing a letter collage for each Letter of the Week. We need your help to make this the most effective and exciting it can be! Your child will be getting an envelope to take home each week. He/she is responsible for looking through magazines, newspapers, etc. to find pictures of anything that starts with that letter. (Feel free to have them bring in a picture of themselves for the classroom collage during the week of the first letter of their name!) For now, we will just keep it at one picture/cutout per child to ensure that everyone's pictures can fit. For an idea on how this will look in our classroom, take a peak at this classroom that did it first*:
Letter Study: Alphabet Collage
*Disclaimer: I did not come up with this idea on my own, but rather found it on another classroom blog where I get many of the ideas I incorporate into my own classroom. Check out Maria Manore's Kinder-Craze for many creative ideas to use with Kindergarten children!
Check out some of the activities we have been doing in the classroom so far during our alphabet review weeks!
Making letters out of sticks & curves during literacy station rotations:
Letter Explorations, using many different types of letter tiles, magnets, & manipulatives:
No comments:
Post a Comment