Whether we choose distance learning for kindergarten, homeschooling, or in-person learning I have a feeling a lot of our kindergarten curriculum will be delivered as at-home learning in 2020. If you are feeling overwhelmed about how to get ready for Kindergarten, hopefully seeing our plan will help you find a place to start for your family.
READING BOOKS TOGETHER
Both of my kids love to read. I pulled together a small library of books that target kindergarten concepts. I keep them in a laundry basket next to my bed – you don’t have to get fancy.
There are 3 types of books in my kindergarten library basket. I keep a little sticky note inside the cover to remind me what my learning objective is for that book and why it is in the basket.
BOOKS WITH PREDICTABLE TEXT
Kids love to feel the confidence that comes from having a book memorized. Books that have rhyming words, patterns, and parts that return over and over are great for building confidence and helping young learners sit to listen to a book for a longer time period. I love to pause during these books and leave space for them to participate. I never force it but I love creating that offer of a moment for them to think and try to finish the sentence so they feel like we are reading the story as a team.
Take a look at the books I have chosen for that category:
- Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
- Duck, Duck, MOOSE!
- The Little Red Hen
- Over in the Ocean: In a Coral Reef
- Over in the Jungle: A Rainforest Rhyme
- Green Eggs and Ham
- If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
- If You Give a Cat a Cupcake
- The Very Busy Spider
- Big Hugs, Little Hugs
- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick!
- Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus
- Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
- The Bear Went Over the Mountain
- Down by the Station
- Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
- Skip to My Lou
BOOKS WITH A VARIETY OF PUNCTUATION MARKS
At this age I start with 4 punctuation marks. I want my child to know about periods, question marks, exclamation marks, and quotation marks. I want my child to know why we use each type of mark and be able to look for them as we read.
I have this laminated mat included in our Kindergarten library bin so that we can have it on her lap while looking at books that have a variety of punctuation marks.
Sometimes I offer these bookmarks on top of the learning mat and let my child add them to the book whenever she finds an example as we are reading.
Other times I let her hold up these fun bookmarks as signs as we read the book to show when she notices one of those punctuation marks.
These physical items are great for my kinesthetic learners and they also act as stop signs to encourage us to stop and think about why that punctuation mark is being used. My daughter even likes to color in her bookmark’s doodle border as she listens to us reading a story.
The same text from the learning mat is also on a bookmark that we keep in our Kindergarten library bin. Using the same images in multiple ways is like hanging a traditional poster in a classroom environment.
Take a look at the books I have chosen for this category:
- I Don’t Want to be a Frog
- Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
- The End (Almost)
- Polar Bear’s Underwear
- Don’t Push the Button
- Chopsticks
- I Will Surprise My Friend
- Should I Share My Ice Cream?
- Happy Pig Day!
- Dinosaur Kisses
BOOKS WITH CLEAR FONT CHOICES
When we read together I want my child to feel confidence recognizing high frequency words and letters that she knows. For her to build this confidence, I want to make sure some of the books we read each day have large, easy to read print. I made sure to include a variety of both sans serif and serif fonts because there are variations in the text samples that she will encounter but at the start I wanted to make sure we selected books with clearly printed letters.
As we read, I ask some guiding questions about how books are organized. I ask my child to show me:
- The title
- The author
- The illustrator
- The front of the book
- The back of the book
- Where we should begin reading
- A letter
- A word
- The first word in a sentence
- The last word in a sentence
- The first word on a page
- The last word on a page
- A capital letter
- A lowercase letter
Knowing the lingo about books will help students follow along when teachers give directions in Kindergarten.
Here are some favorite titles that we love with clear, font choices:
- Safari (or any of the National Geographic books at this reading level)
- Goodnight Moon
- Pinkalicious and the Sick Day (or any Level 1 Pinkalicious titles)
- What This Story Needs is a Pig in a Wig
- I Love Pink!
- Pete the Cat: Pete’s Big Lunch
- Z is for Moose
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
- Going to the Firehouse
CHOICE BOOKS AT ANY LEVEL
When we sit down to read I choose a book and my child chooses a book. I’m happy to dive into a graphic novel or a thick chapter book like Harry Potter if my child is interested in reading it out loud and talking about it. The kindergarten library just helps me also make sure I am including exposure to some important topics in the Kindergarten learning standards.
Here are a few titles my children reach for again and again:
- Snow Dog, Go Dog
- The 100th Day of School
- Frog and Toad
- Any Rufus Butler Seder title
PRACTICE READING LEFT TO RIGHT
When I am reading books from this small box I make sure to read slowly while tracking the words with my finger. I want to model reading from left to right but also invite my child to practice this with me in a hands-on way to help them remember the action.
I like to use the simple punctuation learning mat with a fun pointer to give my daughter something to hold on days when that helps build her attention and stamina.
This activity also offers a great opportunity to teach that there are finger spaces in between words. While the learning mat is out, this is a quick and easy hands on activity that sets students up with a strong foundation before they begin writing their own sentences.
MAKING WORDS OUT OF LETTERS
It is so important for children to be able to recognize their name and know the letters that are in their name. I love inviting my child to look for the letters that are in her name while we read favorite books. I offer these apple letters in uppercase and lowercase to help at the start of the finding process.
Sometimes we play alphabet soup after we read a book. We take turns pulling apple letters out of a bowl and see who can spell their name first.
Quick Tip: Make sure you have printed extra letters to ensure the task CAN be completed. For example, if EMMA and MOMMY are playing we need to print 4 extra Ms beyond the traditional A-Z alphabet set. That is easy to do with this editable set of apple letters because you can type the letters that you want to print to save paper and ink.
These simple activities build confidence in name recognition and build the foundational understanding that words are made through building with letters.
I am so glad that we printed those apples because we use them all the time. Some nights my daughter chooses two letters from the alphabet soup to look for while we read. We get to talk about what the mystery letter is and if it is uppercase or lowercase. I love to ask guiding questions such as “Where do uppercase letters usually hang out?”
For an extra level of challenge, I printed some blank apples from that same file, laminated them, and used a wet erase marker to write some sight words on them to give my child something new to hold and search for as we were reading our favorite books. Once you find an activity your child is enjoying, expand upon it with a small change.
PRACTICE LETTER SOUNDS, THEN WORDS, THEN SENTENCES
As an online ESL teacher, synthetic phonics are something I feel strongly about so practicing the letter sounds using our apples is an easy activity that we often do along with a video like this one:
We can blend those same letters into words later. I like to do hands on blending activities but then offer the apples for creative play where my child can make her own words and explore the letter sounds that she knows on her own. I also model tapping on our body to make sure each letter sound is clearly experienced in these early days of building a strong reading foundation.
I model activities where we change the first letter but also activities where we change the ending of a word.
As she develops confidence in a few short words, I like to offer a magnetic poetry set so she can start building short sentences. It’s so fun to change the sentences when she goes to bed and leave a new message for her to discover and start to try to read.
SYLLABLE PRACTICE
I know that building words will have a higher level of success if my child also has a strong understanding of syllables so I offer some practice activities with syllables around the same time in the learning sequence.
I want my child to be able to say the word, and then say the word while clapping to show the syllable count
I also want to offer sorting activities so they can practice and apply this technique on their own
EXPLORING RHYMES
While the books we read with repetition also involve a lot of rhyming, we love to also offer these rhyming houses as a play opportunity where we can work together to listen to words that have the same sound at the end. I participate more during the first few offerings and my child’s confidence with the words increases each time she selects the activity.
RETELLING
My favorite part of reading books together might be asking questions at the end. I love to invite her to tell me what the story was about, what her favorite part was, or even invent a new ending.
I hope these simple home activities help you feel confident that you have all the tools you need to help your child get ready for Kindergarten at home. All of these activities directly support the Kindergarten ELA Reading Foundational Skills that are taken from the Common Core Standards. If I can lay a strong foundation in this area, I know my child will enter Kindergarten with confidence.
GETTING READY FOR KINDERGARTEN AT HOME
Can you incorporate some math and social skills to help your child get ready for Kindergarten as well? Of course! For me, laying this foundation in the area of reading helps give a huge confidence boost to students when they walk through the doors on the first day of school. While reading at home is always an important part of the day, the closer we get to Kindergarten the more of a gentle skill-building time that we share together.
