Month: January 2011

Tracing Stamps

The more experience your little one has with writing the more control they will have.  Today’s activity is going to combine a free exploration activity with the structured one….sounds crazy, I know, give me a minute to explain.

I want you to consider purchasing one (or any combination) of the following tracing stamp sets and ink pad.  I LOVE using these with my kiddos and there are so many ways to use them to accomodate to different levels of reading and writing ability.

When you first get them in you are going to show your child how to use them by taking one letter/number at a time and carefully dipping it in the ink, and then carefully placing it on the paper. 

You can show your child the letters it takes to stamp your name, his/her name, and many other words they want to know how to spell, but FIRST…let them PLAY.  I know…takes all the fun out of teaching doesn’t it haha.  But this is called free exploration, and children need to have time to play with materials (which are toys to them) before working with them.  I used to tell my kids “I’m going to give you 10 minutes to play with the _______; then we will do an activity with them after.”

Then you are going to model his/her name, your name (“mom” or “dad”), and maybe a few other simple words. 

Next, you are going to take out a pencil, marker, crayon, colored pencil, or something like it to trace over the letters.

Finally, let your child stamp whatever he/she chooses.  It is okay if it is a string of random letters.  But you are then going to take your child’s hand (if he/she is willing to let you help) and trace over the letters together.  Your child can do this on his own when he is confident enough to do so.

If you can’t afford to buy tracing stamps, go to my “Activity Archives” and click on “Tracing the Alphabet.” Simply cut out the letters and let them make their words using the cut outs, and trace them as well!

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Occasionally people ask me if I worry about running out of information for this site.  My response is that I have an infinate amount of activities and information that I want to post about and if anything I struggle with getting ahead of myself.  And I have to confess I already have!  I want to show parents the sequence of understanding a child’s development in reading, writing, and math so bad that I want to lay it out post by post.  But today, I am stepping back, only SLIGHTLY, to take what I already have introduced and add a lot more activities to it. 

For example, I wrote a post not long ago about phonemic awareness, but there is SO much to know about phonemic awareness and there are a few other skills to master before introducing the one I posted about coloring a gingerbread house.

So take a minute, breathe, and brace yourself for a little lesson that is “the secret key to reading success” (as my friend and mentor Beth Yglesias puts it).

Phonemic awareness is the awareness of sounds within a word.  To learn this process there is a ladder of skills that must be climbed to achieve the FLUENCY and structure of reading.  So here is a visual breakdown for you: Click HERE on Reading Ladder if you cannot read the image below or click on the image itself.

I wanted you to see this so that you would understand the sequence of activities I am posting,  Each step needs to be MASTERED before moving up to the next.  So I am going to try to post more activities on the earliest steps first to give you lots to practice 🙂

All that to say, I posted an activity recently for a child who has established the Step 5 skill and I skipped an activity for Step 4: Listening for a word in parts and hearing the whole word….so here is an activity for Step 4:

Step four is to be able to listen to the sounds that make up a word such as /c/-/at/ and understand that you are saying the word “cat”

*******When a letter is inside of this symbol “//” you make the letter SOUND not the letter name.  

So if I were to show my little one (who can rhyme as well as clap words and word parts) pictures of a cat, a dog, and a fish, and asked him/her to show me the picture of the /f/-/ish/, he would point to the fish.

But this is just the first level of giving him/her a chance to listen for the word parts to hear a word.  The next level, after this one is mastered, is to ask him/her to show me the picture of the /f/-/i/-/sh/ and he would hear all those sounds together and point to the fish.

Here is a page of pictures for you to practice the FIRST LEVEL of this skill:

Listen To Find The Picture

Introducing the Concept of Pattern

Don’t write me off too soon! I have talked to a lot of moms of my kindergarten students who practically want to punch me in the face if I spend too long on this subject of patterns.  They say “My child worked on patterns in Pre-K, and he (or she) picked up on it very quickly.”

Trust me, I understand, I teach the subject over and over again so I can also get a little burnt out on patterns myself, but as a teacher let me talk to you for a moment about patterns so you hopefully won’t roll your eyes with each pattern post.

When your little one learns about patterns he/she gets so excited and thrilled to practice this skill because it gives order and predictability to activities, and how things in life work together in general.  After the concept of pattern is developed, children can predict that Tuesday comes after Monday, lunch comes after breakfast, and eventually they will learn that the number system is based on a pattern understanding that 12 comes after 11 because the tens place stays the same and the ones place follows a pattern of 1, 2, 3, etc.

So, the whole AB, AABB, ABC pattern lesson is a means to understanding the bigger picture of observing patterns in everyday life.

If your child understands certain aspects of patterns….GREAT….build on that.  There is usually an aspect of patterns that can be taught to add to one learned.

First, patterns can be taught in rhythmic motion such as listening to a beat and predicting what might come next.  Then, patterns are taught using color, shape, and arrangement.  Then, patterns can incorporate a letter symbol.  Then, patterns can be taught by extending all those skills with a higher level of difficulty.  Then, patterns can be taught using numbers.  Additionally, with these understandings, patterns can be observed naturally through everyday occurrences such as waking and sleeping, days of the week, seasons of the year, etc..

The main lesson in teaching patterns is that something repeats itself.  So remember the “I do, We do, You do” teaching skill from the post “Math on my Fingers” today you are going to:

1) Start a pattern to a beat such as “Clap, pat (your legs), clap, pat, clap, pat……

Rhythm Pattern

2) Ask your child to join in; continue on for a minute or so.  Then you are going to add the words saying “Clap, Pat, Clap, pat….”

3) “Let’s do another pattern using our bodies” Ideas: stomp, tap your head, snap, nod, tap your shoulders, flap your arms, etc.

4) Ask your child if they would like to come up with one for you or a family member to do. If your child does not follow a pattern, remind them that you want to pick one of two things that repeat themselves over and over again like the one you chose.

5) Practice variations of this over the next few days in my next math post I am going to add an extension activity for this same rhythmic pattern activity.

Consider purchase the following cubes, book (or a similar book) for the next few pattern lessons:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

1 2 3 4