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Learning Activities at Home
Since you are your child’s first and most important teacher,
you might be wondering about the kinds of activities you could be
doing at home to help your child get off to a great start in
kindergarten. These suggestions and ideas are intended to be used in
a relaxed matter to help your child practice skills and further
develop concepts previously presented at school. Take your time
exploring these activities and make them fun and engaging. Happy
learning!
Language is speaking, listening, reading, writing and thinking.
Encouraging any one of these will assist in the development of all
areas.
Make reading daily with your child a homework habit this year.
Reading together daily is a time-tested and research-based method of
helping young learners develop early reading skills and a love of
reading. Read for pleasure, read to your child, read with your
child, and let your child “read” to you. Don’t take a vacation from
reading!
To build pre-reading skills, encourage your child to listen for
letter sounds and find letters in words. Use books as tools to give
your young reader success with learning how to find meaning from
printed materials and to develop comprehension skills.
When reading with your child discuss the pictures, print and
plot. Run your finger along under the words as you read. Encourage
your child to read the words he/she knows. Have your child make
predictions and ask questions such as, “What do you think will happen
next?” and “Why do you think he did that?”
READING AND WRITING READINESS
*Recite the ABC’s using a chart and a pointer. Have your child point
to the letters as they say them. Eventually, have them add the
letter sounds after saying the letter name. When possible relate
letters to classmates and family member’s names. Example: Letter
Name-A, Letter Sound-A, A for Allison
*Have ABC puzzles available for them. Have them say the alphabet
while pointing to the letters on the puzzle.
*Make letters out of Play-Doh.
*Have your child write letters in shaving cream. Use the large
seafood trays to put shaving cream in. The trays are also great for
Play-Doh.
*Paint letters on the cement with water.
*Put magnetic letters on the fridge.
*Make letter cards (two of each letter) out of paper and play
matching games. Choose several pairs of matching letters and spread
them out face down. As your child turns over each letter, they must
name them. If they match, they keep the pair, if not, they are
turned back over. Increase the level of difficulty by matching upper
and lowercase letters and have your child say the letter sounds.
*Recite nursery rhymes, sing rhyming songs and read rhyming books.
*Play rhyming games whenever possible. Tell your child that you are
thinking of a word that rhymes with cat and begins with the
letter “b.”
*Read the labels on household objects with your child, casually
pointing out the letters and sounds they make. Example: Doritos,
Fruit Loops
*Locate print in the environment. Example: stop signs, familiar
store and restaurant signs, such as McDonald’s, pointing out the
letters and sounds they make.
*Encourage your child to experiment with print in writing.
*Help your child write their name correctly. First letters
capitalized and the rest in lowercase letters.
*Have a word of the day and post in on the fridge.
*Make a password and post it on different doors of the house or in
the car, etc. and have your child read the word to you before
entering.
*Play “Hangman” using words from the word lists or sight words.
*Find words in magazines and newspapers. Highlight them or cut them
out and make collages out of them.
*Leave short notes of instruction or praise for your child, using
words familiar to them.
*Put a wipe-off message board on your child’s door and write messages
to each other.
*Encourage your child to write lists (Grocery, Christmas), letters
and stories.
*Have writing materials available to them when playing at all times.
Example: When playing kitchen, provide menus and little notepads to
play restaurant, and when playing with blocks/Legos provide paper so
they can make signs, etc.
*Use a chart with words and pictures to indicate your child’s
bedtime, household chores, accomplishments, etc.
*Encourage your child to consider themselves a reader and a writer!
Praise your child’s reading when they recognize familiar words and
names. Praise and accept their attempts at spelling.
MATH READINESS
*Whenever you use math, talk about it.
*Count whenever you can, anything you can!
*Read nursery rhymes and storybooks that incorporate numbers.
*Practice one-to-one correspondence by letting your child set the
table or hand out snacks.
*Play games that incorporate math such as “Chutes and Ladders” and
other board games.
*Point out shapes around the house and when doing errands.
*Have your child sort their toys by color, shape and size.
*Sort household items into many types of groups with your child. For
ex. Sort all the laundry and have your child tell how the clothes in
each pile are alike.
*Encourage your child to see patterns and sets in everyday living.
*Playing cards are also great for matching games and ordering numbers.
*Discuss the quantity and amount of household items you use. Point
out or ask your child to find numbers that indicate quantity on
packages.
*Count various things around the house. Count shirts by ones, count
shoes by twos, count other objects by tens and fives.
*Encourage the use of the following concepts: more and less, younger
and older, larger and smaller, longer and shorter, and any other
terms when making comparisons.
*Practice the concept of left and right. When riding in the car you
can say, “McDonald’s is on the left” or when setting the table you
can say, “Put the spoon on the right side of your plate.”
*Whenever you check your child’s height to see how much they have
grown, talk about measurement.
*Let your child help with the measuring when cooking or baking.
*Talk about simple fractions whenever possible. Example: I have a
whole apple, I am cutting the apple in half.
*Set the timer for an activity to give your child a sense of how long
it lasts.
*Practice telling time with your child to the hour.
*Have you child do basic addition around the house. Example: "We
have 3 green towels and 2 blue towels, how many do we have all
together?"
*Give your child a snack that’s easy to count. Have them count the
pieces and subtract them as they are eaten.
*Sort a handful of change and have your child discuss how they are
alike, the same, and different.
*Choose a “coin of the day” and talk about what is shown on both
sides.
*Start a penny jar. Use this for counting and estimating.
Example: "We have ten pennies in the jar, is that enough to buy a
piece of candy that costs five cents?"
*Put a large wipe-off calendar on the refrigerator and mark down
special events. Count down the days to each of these occasions.
Recite the days of the week and stop when you get to the day you are
on.
*Make a 100 chart and practice counting out loud.
*Find out what your child is studying in school. Help them relate
this subject to their own or family experiences.
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Fine motor skills can be defined as small muscle movements:
those that occur in the finger in coordination with the eye. These
skills allow delicate and finer manipulation of objects. Fine motor
development takes place after most of the gross motor skills are
mastered. Fine motor skills won’t develop over night, but with time
and practice. Here are some suggestions and activities for
developing fine motor skills.
A child can be encouraged to insert their favorite CD into the
computer CD drive. The mouse and keyboard will also help improve
hand and eye coordination. Upright working surfaces promote fine
motor skills. Examples of these are: vertical chalkboards, easels
for painting, lite brite, etc.
*Puzzles
*Coloring
*Cutting
*Gluing
*Stencils
*Tracing
*Any type of lacing
*Self-Care Skills: Buttoning, Fastening Snaps, Zipping and Tying
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