Kindergarten is a very important year for your child. The activities we will use, even those that look like play, are designed to teach the children skills needed for success in their school careers. The children are learning everything from reading and math skills to working well with others.

Kindergarten children spend much more of their day at home than they do at school. So you, the parents, are the child's first and most important teachers. Read to your child daily and play games. Do puzzles and color together. You have already done an outstanding job teaching your child all that he/she knows. Thank you for allowing me to build on the solid foundation you have prepared.

Practice Kindergarten Sight Words.   Use Kindergarten Concept Words.

Reading Readiness - Skills to Practice pointing and saying (not singing the alphabet) identifying uppercase and lowercase letters identifying rhyming pictures associating letter sounds printing first and last name (capital first letter/lowercase for the rest) printing uppercase and lowercase letters

Math Activities- Skills to Practice identify 8 basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black) sorting different objects by color, shape, and size naming 4 basic shapes (circle, square, rectangle, triangle) building patterns (AB, AAB, ABC) counting objects, identifying numerals, and writing numerals from 0 to 20. put events in sequential order solve simple addition and subtraction problems.

Concepts of Print Visually attending to elements of books is critical to reading success. When reading a book with your child, see if they can identify these important concepts about print. Of course, this is not an exclusive listing. As your child becomes more aware of the concepts about print, work on harder elements. Where is the front/back/title of a book? Where do you start reading? Which page comes first/last? Point to each word as you read. Where is the first/last word? Show me one letter/two letters; one word/two words; first/last letter of a word; a capital letter/a lowercase letter. What is this punctuation called? What does it do? (Ask about periods, exclamation marks, question marks, commas, quotations).

3 Minute Word Write To practice a 3-minute word write at home. Take your child outside or some place where few words are printed on walls around them. The goal is to write as many words as possible in 3 minutes. The child may not copy from charts or models. You may give oral prompts (Can you write the word cat, dog, your name, Mom, Dad, etc.).

Sentence Dictation This helps children practice hearing the sounds within words and writing them down on paper. The student listens as the adult slowly says an easy sentence. For example, The dog can run. The student writes the sounds they hear for words in the sentence. To improve your child's ability at writing dictated sentences, use Kidwriting at home.