We’re fast approaching the first school holidays of the year. About 10 weeks ago, Mr N and M headed off enthusiastically to school, into their Kindergarten class. I also headed back to the world of teaching, and oddly enough – also to a Kindergarten class. So much happens in Kindergarten, but in my mind, reading, and learning to read is a huge part of Kindergarten.

How To Support Your Child’s Reading At Home

Before I delve into some specific activities that you can do at home to complement your child’s reading lessons at school, I want to make it clear that above all, reading with your child at home should be enjoyable. I know first hand how hard it is to juggle everything into the tiny space of time between getting home and children’s bedtimes – and on fading energy levels.

The best thing you can do to support your child’s reading at home is to listen to your child read every day, even for a short time.

I also personally think the 10 ways to encourage reading that I previously shared takes precedence over these possible specific activities you can do with your Kindergarten child at home. Growing a love of reading and of literature is priceless.

Having said all that, I have lately incorporated these short little activities at home with my Twin 5’s as part of our reading time at home. We only do these activities when we have a bit more time and energy up our sleeves.

I think these short reading activities can help consolidate certain reading skills taught in Kindergarten, and hence am glad to be sharing them here with you.

Activity #1: An Unknown Word in the Text

Using the text that the child has just read, choose one unknown word for them to look for, locate and construct.

For example, if the your child didn’t know the word “the”, ask him/her to find “the” on a given page. Have them re-read the sentence, stop at the word “the” and point to it.

We have a tub of magnetic letters at home and some small magnetic whiteboards. Such useful resources and certainly worth investing in. However, if you don’t have these, you can easily make up some small cardboard squares with letters on them and use these instead.

Give your child the letters that make up the unknown word. For e.g. for “the”, give them the letters “t”, “h”, “e”. Don’t give it to them in any particular order or the right way up necessarily. Ask them, using these letters, to make the word “the”. Check that they’ve:

• Placed the letters in the right sequence – e.g. t first, h next, and e last.
• Put the word together in the right direction – from left to right.
• Orientated the letters correctly – e.g. the letters t or h or e aren’t placed upside down.

After they have constructed the unknown word, have them write the word, checking that they’ve:

• Written the letters in the right sequence – e.g. t first, h next, and e last.
• Written the word together in the right direction – from left to right.
• Orientated the letters correctly – e.g. the letters t or h or e aren’t upside down.
• Used the correct letter formations – e.g.  for the letter t, we go down, take our pencils off, then draw a line across from left to right ; we don’t go up, pencils off, then draw a line across right to left.

Activity #2: A Known Word in the Text

Using the text that the child has just read, choose a known word.

For example, with Mr N, our known word was “pig”. I asked him to re-read the sentence and stop at the word “pig”.

I asked him to make the word “pig” using our magnetic letters. We then talked about what we would need to change in “pig” to make the word “big”. We discussed how the beginning sound/letter would need to change. I then asked if he could make the word “big” and place it next to “pig” so it would read “big pig”.

He then wrote the words “big pig” and drew a picture of a big pig. As with the unknown word activity, check that they’ve:

• Written the letters in the right sequence.
• Written the word together in the right direction.
• Orientated the letters correctly.
• Used the correct letter formations.

With this unknown word activity, you’re not necessarily going to get words that go well next to each other like “big pig”. Your two words may be “can” and “fan”. In which case, you would just have one word on the board at any given time. E.g. change the word “can” to “fan”. You can then ask them to draw a fan.

Activity #3: New Letter Combinations

As Mr N could do the above quite confidently, I then challenged him to make the word “small”, so it would be “small pig” instead of “big pig”. He proceeded to make the word “small”, spelling it “smol”, which makes perfect sense phonetically. I praised his attempt, then introduced the new letter combination “all” to him. We talked about some words with the letter combination “all”, like “fall”, “call”, “tall”, “ball” and “small”.

He made the word “small”, using the “all” letter combination, then wrote the words, “small pig”, and finish it off with a picture of a small pig.

Encouraging Children to be Independent and Autonomous Learners

The pace at which children learn is incredible. Even during those times when it seems like they aren’t quite grasping new concepts at a pace you’d expect or like them to, be confident that they will learn how to read – (perhaps to a different time frame to your expectations though).

While the above reading word activities for kindergarten can be helpful, to encourage children to be independent and autonomous learners, ensure that they have plenty of opportunities to read books that they are familiar with. Books that they can read easily, accurately and fluently without support. Give them access to a rich and varied range of reading material. Let them choose. Let them read. Give them time to read regularly during the week.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Reading: 3 Kindergarten Word Activities by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

As I sit here racking my brain for a way to begin this post about fine motor skills, my Miss K (2yo) is banging away in our writing and art area. She’s got a tub filled with markers and stamp markers, and is happily creating, with stamps and scribbles on a bright blue piece of paper.

Seems like an ordinary thing, and I’m grateful that we get to have moments like that regularly, so it is very much part of our every day. Surrounding kids every day with opportunities to develop their fine motor skills helps them strengthen the hand muscles they need for fine movements.

Here is a fun and engaging fine motor skill activity that is used regularly in my kindergarten classroom. It was new to me, and I love it so much that I’ve wanted to share it here on the blog for awhile now. I’m glad I am finally putting this post together!

We use pin pricking activities to help children build up their fine motor skills. The stronger their fine motor skills, the easier it will be for them to manipulate and control a range of materials and tools, like pencils, scissors, brushes, etc.

The pin pricking activity shown here, was put together by one of the other kindergarten teachers at my school. We used it as one of our phonics activities for “i”. The idea behind a pin pricking activity is very simple. Children use something sharp, like a toothpick or pin, to prick a hole at every dot on the page.

We were out of pins and toothpicks at home, so Mr 3 used one of our bento food picks.

I encourage children to use a pincer grip during the activity by asking them to create a quacking duck with their thumb and index finger. I then place the pick in between their thumbs and index finger.

To create a pin prick activity of your own, simply find either a letter, a word, or a picture, or a combination of these. Draw large (or small) dots on the letter, words, pictures.

To play, find a spot on the carpet. With Mr E, I also placed a cork board that came with our tap tap set as a base for the activity. However, in my classroom, the children comfortably do the activity on the carpet. Your child will also need a pin, toothpick or food pick. They have to prick a hole at every dot on the page. When the activity is done, it’s fun to flip the page over and see the image they have created with their holes. It’s also lovely to have light shine through the finished page, after the pin pricking has been done.

More Activities for Preschoolers

Three to Five: Playful Preschool is stuffed to the brim with tried, tested and loved playful learning ideas for preschoolers. There are 25+ ideas for preschoolers, ten printable resources and additional links to over 50 more activities. A great resource for parents. Download your copy here.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Fine Motor Skills: Pin Pricking by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

 
Macro concepts & core enduring understandings:

 
Children begin exploring number and pre-algebraic concepts by pattern making. Genuine algebraic thinking begins with the development of a child’s ability to:

• Recognise, describe, create and continue repeating patterns;
• Describe repeating patterns in terms of the number of elements that repeat;
• Understand that the equals sign means ‘is the same as’.

 
Set the stage for learning:

 
To begin, make patterns using only colours or shapes. If using colours, place a variety of small dishes with different coloured paint on the table and the same block shape (e.g. squares) in each dish. If using shapes to make the patterns, use the same paint colour in each of the small dishes and place different shaped blocks in each paint dish. To extend the activity, you may provide different paints and shapes simultaneously.

 
Provide each child with a large piece of paper with lines drawn either vertically or horizontally, well spaced from each other for the child to print their patterns.

 
Support learning:

 
Encourage a child to:

• Create a wide variety of patterns.
• Describe the patterns verbally. Eg. ‘This pattern is made from triangles. The colours repeat. They go yellow, purple, yellow, purple…”
• Label the patterns using numbers that indicate the number of elements that repeat. Eg yellow, purple, yellow, purple is a ‘two’ pattern.
• Determine if two groups have the same number of objects and describe the equality. Eg ‘The number of shapes in this pattern here is the same as the number of shapes in that pattern there’.

The post Kindergarten Math: Patterns and Algebra with Block Printing by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.