Hello wonderful families,
This package is to support your efforts at home, should you wish to explore literacy and numeracy concepts over the March Break. It is optional, but may serve as a starting point for purposeful play with your child on quiet days at home.
Literacy: In addition to accessing your child’s RAZ-kids account or sharing books through daily reading, the following are ideas for incorporating oral and reading literacy into play.
» Share rhymes, poems and songs. Encourage your child to join in. » Share and talk about family histories and family photos. » Look at picture books or art books. Ask your child to describe what is happening in the pictures and make up stories together. » Collect cardboard and other household items for your child to build with. Ask your child to describe what they are building.Play vocabulary games with your child such as, “what’s the opposite of ….?” (for example, “what’s the opposite of big?”) and “what’s another word for….?” (for example, “what’s another word for happy?” Say silly tongue twisters. Play with puppets. Play sound games (ie blending sounds into words like m-o-p).
HELPING YOUR CHILD TO WRITE: We are sending home a journal for your child to draw and write stories in. (You can access free journal writing paper online to print off for your child too.) All students are at different stages. Learning to write begins with scribbling and drawing. This is an important first step and should be encouraged. The next step is to encourage your child to write letter-like shapes, before moving on to practise writing the alphabet – both capitals and lower case letters. After this, encourage your child to write sentences containing short words. If your child cannot write yet, you could write for them. Here is a strategy: » Ask your child to talk about an experience or something that interests them. » Ask your child what part of the conversation they would like you to write down. » As your child is talking, write down their ideas. Use their language. You may wish to print a simple word or two in highlighter for them to trace over with a pencil, focusing on top-to-bottom and left-to-right progression.
» Ask your child to describe back to you what you wrote down, or ask them to read back the writing. » Your child may want to draw a picture or create something to match the writing. Encourage your child to take over some or all of the writing when they feel confident. When your child starts writing, try the following: » Discuss the topic to give your child some ideas to explore. This gives them confidence to begin writing. » Teach your child any vocabulary they might need. Support and encourage them to “stretch their sounds” by putting the sounds that they hear. (Ie. ice cream may look like is crem - all attempts are valuable and meant to encourage printing sounds to share their writing» You can encourage your child by writing on a similar topic alongside them. Then you can share your writing with each other and discuss the differences.
Try some of these writing ideas: » Write a shopping list or add items to a list. » Keep a board to write and read family messages. » Give your child a pad of sticky notes to write reminders for themselves. » Plan and write your weekly menu together. » Write captions for photographs in your family photo album. » Write labels for your child’s art works and creations. » Make words using magnetic letters and stick them on the fridge. » Make and write greeting cards, birthday cards, and thank you notes. » Keep a family calendar on display and write down family events.
Numeracy: A reminder that you may wish to access your child’s Zorbits Math account for curriculum-based math games. Talking about math is important for children to develop specific language skills related to math. It might take time for your child to use these terms and language effectively, but exposure to this mathematical talk is a strong support for future learning. Some activities to develop mathematical language: » Use specific terms when asking for items. For example, ask your child to get the ‘one litre’ milk jug from the fridge, or the ‘one kilo’ bag of flour from the cupboard. » When cooking, talk about different measurements used, such as teaspoons, millilitres, litres, and cups. Discuss ideas about empty and full. » As you walk, talk and play together describe your child’s movements as they climb ‘over’ the fence, slide ‘between’ the poles, and swing ‘under’ the monkey bars. This helps your child understand language related to spatial awareness. » Sorting activities support your child to understand concepts such as ‘same’ and ‘different’. Create patterns. Search for shapes. Use recycling as an opportunity to sort items.
Counting: Counting is one of the first experiences of math for young children. Learning to say numbers often begins with a favourite song or rhyme and the repetition of the number names. Children will often say the numbers before they visually recognise and identify individual numbers. Here are some activities and tips to engage your child with counting: » Listen for the counting sequence in these songs and rhymes, which can all be found on www.youtube.com: • Five Little Ducks • Ten in the Bed • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive • Ten Green Bottles • Five Little Monkeys • 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe » Children will begin by counting all objects in a group, for example fingers and toes, the buttons on their clothes, steps to the house, or their toys. » As children move on to counting a set of objects, they begin to link each object with one number. In the beginning, encourage your child to touch each object as they say the matching number. » When beginning to count a group of objects, children may need to arrange the objects in a line to help them count. Later they will be able to start counting from any object without arranging the objects. » Once your child is confident, use different numbers as the starting point for practising counting. For example, start counting from 6 or 10. Ask your child to count forwards and backwards. Ask what number comes before, or what number comes after, a given number. You can incorporate counting into everyday activities such as: » Cut fruit into six pieces and ask your child to count the pieces. » Count the pieces of toast you cooked at breakfast. » Add the total number of cutlery items at the table. » Count the number of houses as you walk along the street. » Count how many steps it takes to walk from the kitchen to the bathroom. » Practise counting when grocery shopping with your child (for example, counting the number of apples you put into the bag). » Encourage your child to talk about the number of things in the pictures they draw. Number hunts are a fun and engaging activity for your child. Ask your child to find numbers around you. Look at and say the numbers on license plates, signs, calendars, newspapers, shopping catalogues, speed signs, and houses. Playing with cards is always a fun activity; you can: » Play matching number games like ‘Snap’ with playing cards. » Order the numbers on the cards from smallest to largest, or largest to smallest. Playing “store: Playing “store” helps ground your child’s math learning in the real world while also developing their social skills. One way to play shop is to create a mini-shop at home. Here are a few tips and activities: » Collect food and grocery items and label them with prices written on sticky notes, or prices cut out of shopping catalogues. » Talk about how we pay for items using coins and cards. » Make paper money or use play money to buy and sell goods from the mini-shop. » Collect old receipts or price tags and use them in the minishop. » Notice the features of different coins, including their shapes and the animals and people shown. Discuss the differences. Create coin rubbings with pencils and paper. » Encourage your child to order food items by height (tallest to the shortest) or by cost (least expensive to most expensive). » Introduce kitchen scales to the mini-shop to weigh foods, such as a box of tea bags or a bag of rice, and order items by weight. » Play ‘I Spy’ or other games to help your child identify shapes, numbers and patterns. » Board games are a fun way to involve the whole family with math. Help your child when rolling dice to count, move, and stop after moving the number shown on the dice. » When using dice your child may count all the dots on the die face to determine the total number. Over time they will begin to recognize automatically the value on the dice without counting. »
The Kinder Team wishes all of our students and families happy and healthy March Breaks and we look forward to seeing you all back soon!
The K-Team
This package is to support your efforts at home, should you wish to explore literacy and numeracy concepts over the March Break. It is optional, but may serve as a starting point for purposeful play with your child on quiet days at home.
Literacy: In addition to accessing your child’s RAZ-kids account or sharing books through daily reading, the following are ideas for incorporating oral and reading literacy into play.
» Share rhymes, poems and songs. Encourage your child to join in. » Share and talk about family histories and family photos. » Look at picture books or art books. Ask your child to describe what is happening in the pictures and make up stories together. » Collect cardboard and other household items for your child to build with. Ask your child to describe what they are building.Play vocabulary games with your child such as, “what’s the opposite of ….?” (for example, “what’s the opposite of big?”) and “what’s another word for….?” (for example, “what’s another word for happy?” Say silly tongue twisters. Play with puppets. Play sound games (ie blending sounds into words like m-o-p).
HELPING YOUR CHILD TO WRITE: We are sending home a journal for your child to draw and write stories in. (You can access free journal writing paper online to print off for your child too.) All students are at different stages. Learning to write begins with scribbling and drawing. This is an important first step and should be encouraged. The next step is to encourage your child to write letter-like shapes, before moving on to practise writing the alphabet – both capitals and lower case letters. After this, encourage your child to write sentences containing short words. If your child cannot write yet, you could write for them. Here is a strategy: » Ask your child to talk about an experience or something that interests them. » Ask your child what part of the conversation they would like you to write down. » As your child is talking, write down their ideas. Use their language. You may wish to print a simple word or two in highlighter for them to trace over with a pencil, focusing on top-to-bottom and left-to-right progression.
» Ask your child to describe back to you what you wrote down, or ask them to read back the writing. » Your child may want to draw a picture or create something to match the writing. Encourage your child to take over some or all of the writing when they feel confident. When your child starts writing, try the following: » Discuss the topic to give your child some ideas to explore. This gives them confidence to begin writing. » Teach your child any vocabulary they might need. Support and encourage them to “stretch their sounds” by putting the sounds that they hear. (Ie. ice cream may look like is crem - all attempts are valuable and meant to encourage printing sounds to share their writing» You can encourage your child by writing on a similar topic alongside them. Then you can share your writing with each other and discuss the differences.
Try some of these writing ideas: » Write a shopping list or add items to a list. » Keep a board to write and read family messages. » Give your child a pad of sticky notes to write reminders for themselves. » Plan and write your weekly menu together. » Write captions for photographs in your family photo album. » Write labels for your child’s art works and creations. » Make words using magnetic letters and stick them on the fridge. » Make and write greeting cards, birthday cards, and thank you notes. » Keep a family calendar on display and write down family events.
Numeracy: A reminder that you may wish to access your child’s Zorbits Math account for curriculum-based math games. Talking about math is important for children to develop specific language skills related to math. It might take time for your child to use these terms and language effectively, but exposure to this mathematical talk is a strong support for future learning. Some activities to develop mathematical language: » Use specific terms when asking for items. For example, ask your child to get the ‘one litre’ milk jug from the fridge, or the ‘one kilo’ bag of flour from the cupboard. » When cooking, talk about different measurements used, such as teaspoons, millilitres, litres, and cups. Discuss ideas about empty and full. » As you walk, talk and play together describe your child’s movements as they climb ‘over’ the fence, slide ‘between’ the poles, and swing ‘under’ the monkey bars. This helps your child understand language related to spatial awareness. » Sorting activities support your child to understand concepts such as ‘same’ and ‘different’. Create patterns. Search for shapes. Use recycling as an opportunity to sort items.
Counting: Counting is one of the first experiences of math for young children. Learning to say numbers often begins with a favourite song or rhyme and the repetition of the number names. Children will often say the numbers before they visually recognise and identify individual numbers. Here are some activities and tips to engage your child with counting: » Listen for the counting sequence in these songs and rhymes, which can all be found on www.youtube.com: • Five Little Ducks • Ten in the Bed • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive • Ten Green Bottles • Five Little Monkeys • 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe » Children will begin by counting all objects in a group, for example fingers and toes, the buttons on their clothes, steps to the house, or their toys. » As children move on to counting a set of objects, they begin to link each object with one number. In the beginning, encourage your child to touch each object as they say the matching number. » When beginning to count a group of objects, children may need to arrange the objects in a line to help them count. Later they will be able to start counting from any object without arranging the objects. » Once your child is confident, use different numbers as the starting point for practising counting. For example, start counting from 6 or 10. Ask your child to count forwards and backwards. Ask what number comes before, or what number comes after, a given number. You can incorporate counting into everyday activities such as: » Cut fruit into six pieces and ask your child to count the pieces. » Count the pieces of toast you cooked at breakfast. » Add the total number of cutlery items at the table. » Count the number of houses as you walk along the street. » Count how many steps it takes to walk from the kitchen to the bathroom. » Practise counting when grocery shopping with your child (for example, counting the number of apples you put into the bag). » Encourage your child to talk about the number of things in the pictures they draw. Number hunts are a fun and engaging activity for your child. Ask your child to find numbers around you. Look at and say the numbers on license plates, signs, calendars, newspapers, shopping catalogues, speed signs, and houses. Playing with cards is always a fun activity; you can: » Play matching number games like ‘Snap’ with playing cards. » Order the numbers on the cards from smallest to largest, or largest to smallest. Playing “store: Playing “store” helps ground your child’s math learning in the real world while also developing their social skills. One way to play shop is to create a mini-shop at home. Here are a few tips and activities: » Collect food and grocery items and label them with prices written on sticky notes, or prices cut out of shopping catalogues. » Talk about how we pay for items using coins and cards. » Make paper money or use play money to buy and sell goods from the mini-shop. » Collect old receipts or price tags and use them in the minishop. » Notice the features of different coins, including their shapes and the animals and people shown. Discuss the differences. Create coin rubbings with pencils and paper. » Encourage your child to order food items by height (tallest to the shortest) or by cost (least expensive to most expensive). » Introduce kitchen scales to the mini-shop to weigh foods, such as a box of tea bags or a bag of rice, and order items by weight. » Play ‘I Spy’ or other games to help your child identify shapes, numbers and patterns. » Board games are a fun way to involve the whole family with math. Help your child when rolling dice to count, move, and stop after moving the number shown on the dice. » When using dice your child may count all the dots on the die face to determine the total number. Over time they will begin to recognize automatically the value on the dice without counting. »
The Kinder Team wishes all of our students and families happy and healthy March Breaks and we look forward to seeing you all back soon!
The K-Team