Pre Reading
Communication and Literacy Standard 3: Demonstrates early reading skills
Benchmark 3.2: Demonstrates knowledge of the alphabet
“Making concrete connections between abstract symbols and sounds increases children’s ability to learn the alphabet. You can give your child opportunities to make these connections by intruding activities that encourage them to identify letters in familiar words and to associate the names of letters with their shapes and sounds.”
MARCH PRE-READING ACTIVITIES
1 year old: Child sits on parent’s lap and gazes at pictures in books and pats certain pictures. Remember to look for books with real-looking pictures. Help to “name” what the picture is. Repeat the name several times as you point to the picture.
Work on memorizing a new little nursery rhyme for this month.
2 year old: Ask and answer questions about what you are reading. Continue to practice finger plays and nursery rhymes you may have memorized together.
3 Year old: Your child may begin to recognize some of the letters of the alphabet. Create a matching game out of shamrocks. From green construction paper, mom can cut out 48 shamrocks around 3 inches big. On pairs write each of the capital letters of the alphabet. Using a different colored marker, create the matching capital letter. Once you have them cut out and labeled, sit on the floor and show your child how to match them. Place all of the one color of alphabet letters on the floor, and then begin to match the other set to it.
4 year old: You could take the 48 cut-out shamrocks and place a capital on one shamrock and a lowercase that matches on another one. Then show your child how to match the capital letter to the lower case one. Next time you read a book, see if they recognize some of the letters you have been matching. For example, point to all of the letter “t” on the page. Have fun looking at books on spring.
5 year old: To help your child practice some of the top 100 common sight words, on your green construction paper shamrocks, write some of the top 100 sight words your child may know. Add a few extras that they can learn. (The top 100 sight words are listed on the Extra web teaching page for you to choose from. ) Make two of each word so they can practice matching the words. As you go through them the first few times, review the words and the pronunciation.
TOOLS FOR MOTHERHOOD GRADUATES share the activities they are doing at home.
Zoe’s been really curious lately about rhyming and even spelling and reading. It’s been fun. She’ll ask me in the car just out of the blue… “does T start with Tree mom?”… meaning does tree start with T? But she’s learning the sounds and she can easily spell 3 letter words just sounding them out and even can read some of the words.
3 Year Old-- Read a book & bring to life By Kahle, Graduate of TFM 7-week workshop
We read a book about different, shapes, sizes and colors of beads and then we made a bracelet out of beads and a pipecleaner. Kaihtlyn was so proud of herself for making the bracelet on her own.
To bring the "book alive" by creating a fun activity around what we had read, we created a bracelet like what we had read. We had tried putting tap onto the end of yarn at first, but the beads would not go over the tape. A pipe clearner worked well for her to thread the beads onto. With all the beads on the pipe cleaner, I dont have to worry about it breaking. : )
Recommendations: Yes, helps small motor skills. : )
1 1/2 Years Old & 4 Years Old This is an activity that I got from a friend that encourage "reading" in very young ones. Since little ones love to see pictures of babies then this is perfect. So I had Zoe collect things around the house that were certain colors each day for a week then I dressed Lexi (baby sister) in that color and took her picture. Then I put them online at shutterfly.com and ordered a color book of Lexi. I also labeled the different pages/colors in both upper and lowercase letters so Zoe can "read" the letters in the colors and she quite often reads this book to Lexi and spells the words for her. Looking back, I think I would have liked to have done it when Lexi was younger and maybe do two or one page/color for a month so at age 1, she would have the book and we would see her grow. This is a great activity to teach and watch growth in our little ones. -- Heather
3 Years Old I made a worksheet to have Kaihtlyn trace the dots and work on Left to Right concepts. She still hasnt mastered the tracing concept yet without my assistance. She still wants to draw everywhere. This will help strengthen bounderies when working with paper and drawing. This activity helps to teach the child control when drawing. I like the fact that it teaches fine motor skills and teaches L to R. --Kayle
4 1/2 Years Old So we have this old rocking re-cliner chair that no longer has legs. So we put it in the playroom for the girls. I added some throw pillows and a blanket to cuddle with and added a basket next to it on the floor filled with books. Zoe now gets to go upstairs to the playroom to go to her book nook whenever she needs some space and uiet from little sis. Its been a lot of fun and she's using it a lot now. It's been a great retreat for her and less refereeing needed between the girls for me. : )--Heather
1 year old: Child sits on parent’s lap and gazes at pictures in books and pats certain pictures. Remember to look for books with real-looking pictures. Help to “name” what the picture is. Repeat the name several times as you point to the picture.
Work on memorizing a new little nursery rhyme for this month.
2 year old: Ask and answer questions about what you are reading. Continue to practice finger plays and nursery rhymes you may have memorized together.
3 Year old: Your child may begin to recognize some of the letters of the alphabet. Create a matching game out of shamrocks. From green construction paper, mom can cut out 48 shamrocks around 3 inches big. On pairs write each of the capital letters of the alphabet. Using a different colored marker, create the matching capital letter. Once you have them cut out and labeled, sit on the floor and show your child how to match them. Place all of the one color of alphabet letters on the floor, and then begin to match the other set to it.
4 year old: You could take the 48 cut-out shamrocks and place a capital on one shamrock and a lowercase that matches on another one. Then show your child how to match the capital letter to the lower case one. Next time you read a book, see if they recognize some of the letters you have been matching. For example, point to all of the letter “t” on the page. Have fun looking at books on spring.
5 year old: To help your child practice some of the top 100 common sight words, on your green construction paper shamrocks, write some of the top 100 sight words your child may know. Add a few extras that they can learn. (The top 100 sight words are listed on the Extra web teaching page for you to choose from. ) Make two of each word so they can practice matching the words. As you go through them the first few times, review the words and the pronunciation.
TOOLS FOR MOTHERHOOD GRADUATES share the activities they are doing at home.
Zoe’s been really curious lately about rhyming and even spelling and reading. It’s been fun. She’ll ask me in the car just out of the blue… “does T start with Tree mom?”… meaning does tree start with T? But she’s learning the sounds and she can easily spell 3 letter words just sounding them out and even can read some of the words.
3 Year Old-- Read a book & bring to life By Kahle, Graduate of TFM 7-week workshop
We read a book about different, shapes, sizes and colors of beads and then we made a bracelet out of beads and a pipecleaner. Kaihtlyn was so proud of herself for making the bracelet on her own.
To bring the "book alive" by creating a fun activity around what we had read, we created a bracelet like what we had read. We had tried putting tap onto the end of yarn at first, but the beads would not go over the tape. A pipe clearner worked well for her to thread the beads onto. With all the beads on the pipe cleaner, I dont have to worry about it breaking. : )
Recommendations: Yes, helps small motor skills. : )
1 1/2 Years Old & 4 Years Old This is an activity that I got from a friend that encourage "reading" in very young ones. Since little ones love to see pictures of babies then this is perfect. So I had Zoe collect things around the house that were certain colors each day for a week then I dressed Lexi (baby sister) in that color and took her picture. Then I put them online at shutterfly.com and ordered a color book of Lexi. I also labeled the different pages/colors in both upper and lowercase letters so Zoe can "read" the letters in the colors and she quite often reads this book to Lexi and spells the words for her. Looking back, I think I would have liked to have done it when Lexi was younger and maybe do two or one page/color for a month so at age 1, she would have the book and we would see her grow. This is a great activity to teach and watch growth in our little ones. -- Heather
3 Years Old I made a worksheet to have Kaihtlyn trace the dots and work on Left to Right concepts. She still hasnt mastered the tracing concept yet without my assistance. She still wants to draw everywhere. This will help strengthen bounderies when working with paper and drawing. This activity helps to teach the child control when drawing. I like the fact that it teaches fine motor skills and teaches L to R. --Kayle
4 1/2 Years Old So we have this old rocking re-cliner chair that no longer has legs. So we put it in the playroom for the girls. I added some throw pillows and a blanket to cuddle with and added a basket next to it on the floor filled with books. Zoe now gets to go upstairs to the playroom to go to her book nook whenever she needs some space and uiet from little sis. Its been a lot of fun and she's using it a lot now. It's been a great retreat for her and less refereeing needed between the girls for me. : )--Heather