1) Listening to words and identifying whether or not they rhyme: Do these words rhyme: “cat/rat”? ; Do these words rhyme: “hot/shoe”?
2) Listening to rhyming words and coming up with another one: “mop, stop, ________” (Even if they say a made up word like shlop.)
3) Coming up with a rhyming word for a single word: “Can you think of a word that rhymes with day?”
My earlier rhyming posts are both activities that fall into the first category of the rhyming skills because both activities are made to listen for and identify whether or not the words rhyme.
Once your child can tell you whether or not words rhyme (skill #1), you want to practice activities that will help them to create rhymes.
Today’s activity is for all the little ones who have just started to practice counting skills but who are still not quite ready to use number symbols to represent each “set” yet. Learning to count one object at a time is the first skill of meaningful counting experiences to be mastered before incorporating number symbols.
When I say number symbols I just mean the actual numbers 1, 2, 3, etc.
So today you are going to use cubes (blocks, or LEGOs will work too), but the key is using materials that can be stacked on top of each other to make “towers” that are all the same height when using the same number of blocks. So if all you have are LEGOs you may need to sort them into groups that are the same size and use only one group.
You are going to build pairs of towers, some that are the same, and some that are different. So you might build one pair of towers that have 5 cubes each, and one pair of towers that has one tower of 5 and one tower of 3.
You are going to hide all of your tower pairs together under cups, bowls, baskets, or some other non-transparent item in your house.
You are going to ask them to flip one of the bowls over, and decide whether or not the pairs of towers match. You are watching to learn what techniques your child uses to figure it out. Does he line them up to see if they are the same height? Does he count each tower? Does he count the correct number for each tower? Etc.
If he/she gets it right or wrong ask “How can you tell?” Your child’s answers will tell you a lot about whether or not he understands these number concepts or not.
Have your child draw a picture afterwards of the game. “Can you draw a picture of us playing this game so I can keep it in my memory book of all the fun things we did together?” The Binder of FunWork post is a great way to keep these learning milestones. Don’t forget to write the date and some of the things your child said when learning this on the back of their artwork. 🙂
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!
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:
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……
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:
