Summer School at Home with HeidiSongs: Getting Ready for Kindergarten, Week 5!
Welcome to week 5 of Summer School at Home with HeidiSongs! We have even more great ideas for name writing, number recognition, letter identification and more packed into this week. We hope you and your child are having fun with all these great ideas.
Here we go!
Building confidence goes a long way in easing a child's ability to successfully separate from Mom and Dad during the first few days of school. Learning to take care of some basic needs on their own is a huge self-esteem booster, here are a few skills to know.
Being able to accomplish these tasks will provide children with a huge dose of confidence!
Pinterest is full of great name writing and recognition ideas. This one comes from the website Kindergarten Rocks!
Play Doh Name Practice
To do this activity you will need:
- Play Doh
- A printout of your child's name
- A clear page protector
Have your child trace their name with their finger on the piece of paper. Then have them do it again saying each letter name. Next have them form "snakes," out of the Play Doh. They will then use the snakes to form each letter in their name. The plastic page protector makes this a reusable project that can be pulled out again and again.
We love seeing how families are using Heidisongs products at home. Here are two ideas that can easily be adapted to practice letter and sound identification.
Hidden Letter Coloring Page Puzzles
This idea originally used our hidden sight words coloring pages, but works just a great with hidden letter coloring pages!
1. Have your child color in the hidden letter worksheet.
2. While your child is working, talk about the letter and sing the letter song. During this time you can work on coloring a separate letter worksheet. On your copy the letter is left uncolored. When you are finished with coloring your worksheet slip it into a report cover to serve as the base for the puzzle.
3. Cut out the letter your child colored and let them snip the lines dividing the letters, this creates the puzzle pieces.
4. Using your colored worksheet as a base, have your child put the puzzle back together.
Click on the picture below to see the original idea with hidden sight word coloring pages!
Letter Parking Garage
This is another great idea that was originally used to teach sight words, but can be used for letter identification.
To make a letter parking garage:
- Use a large poster board to draw out parking spaces for each car
- Assign each spot a letter
- Grab 26 toy cars and attach pieces of paper with a letter on each one. Now each toy car matches a parking space.
Kids can work on letter identification by matching the cars to their parking spaces or you can print out larger letters and hide them around the room for your child to drive to.
To see how this idea works for teaching sight words, click here.
Working math practice in during the day is easy and fun with these three ideas!
Freeze Dance
To help your little one learn their numbers and have some fun, try playing Freeze Dance.
To play:
- Pop in a Jumpin' Numbers CD and start dancing!
- Set the music player on a timer or just hit pause at random intervals.
- When the music stops, have your little one tell you the name of the number the song was singing about and count it out on their fingers.
- Blast the music again and keep playing!
Number Photo Shoot
Do your kids love taking pictures with your smart phone? Put that time to good use and have them snap photos of numbers around the house or neighborhood. Challenge your child to take pictures of the numbers 0-10 in order. Have your child see if they can find more 5's or 2's throughout the house. If you are able, print the photos and make a counting book so they can review their numbers and hard work over and over again.
Jumpin' Numbers Bingo
We have a great downloadable resource on our website for Jumpin' Numbers Bingo!
This is a fantastic game to take to play while waiting at restaurants, in doctors offices, or to enjoy on summer camping trips.
The download includes cards to print at home that will help teach your child the numbers 0-10 and all the shapes included on the Jumpin' Numbers and Shakin' Shapes DVD. It is a fun way to drill those math skills!
Here are two great ways of helping your child learn about rhyming words and sounds.
Rhyming Basket
This idea comes from the website The Imagination Tree.
To play this game at home, fill a basket with pairs of toys that rhyme. For instance a small doll's coat would be the rhyming pair for a toy boat. Have your child spend time finding all the rhyming pairs and line them up. Review the pairs with your child and see if they can come up with even more rhyming words to go with each object.
Listening Detective
Reading with your child is always a great way to help them build literacy skills. To help them learn to identify rhyming words teach them to be a listening detective. Start by reading through a book that has rhyming words, board books are a great tool for this. When you reach a page that has rhyming words point them out to your child. On the second read through, have your child tell you which words rhyme. On the third read through, have your child mark the rhyming words with a post-it note or sticky flag so that they can review the rhymes on their own.
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Looking for more learn at home ideas? Check out our previous Summer School at Home with Heidisongs: Getting Ready for Kindergarten posts!
Click here for Week 1!
Click here for Week 2!
Click here for Week 3!
Click here for Week 4!
-Heidi
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Here we go!
Building confidence goes a long way in easing a child's ability to successfully separate from Mom and Dad during the first few days of school. Learning to take care of some basic needs on their own is a huge self-esteem booster, here are a few skills to know.
Being able to accomplish these tasks will provide children with a huge dose of confidence!
Pinterest is full of great name writing and recognition ideas. This one comes from the website Kindergarten Rocks!
Play Doh Name Practice
To do this activity you will need:
- Play Doh
- A printout of your child's name
- A clear page protector
Have your child trace their name with their finger on the piece of paper. Then have them do it again saying each letter name. Next have them form "snakes," out of the Play Doh. They will then use the snakes to form each letter in their name. The plastic page protector makes this a reusable project that can be pulled out again and again.
We love seeing how families are using Heidisongs products at home. Here are two ideas that can easily be adapted to practice letter and sound identification.
Hidden Letter Coloring Page Puzzles
This idea originally used our hidden sight words coloring pages, but works just a great with hidden letter coloring pages!
1. Have your child color in the hidden letter worksheet.
2. While your child is working, talk about the letter and sing the letter song. During this time you can work on coloring a separate letter worksheet. On your copy the letter is left uncolored. When you are finished with coloring your worksheet slip it into a report cover to serve as the base for the puzzle.
3. Cut out the letter your child colored and let them snip the lines dividing the letters, this creates the puzzle pieces.
4. Using your colored worksheet as a base, have your child put the puzzle back together.
Click on the picture below to see the original idea with hidden sight word coloring pages!
Letter Parking Garage
This is another great idea that was originally used to teach sight words, but can be used for letter identification.
To make a letter parking garage:
- Use a large poster board to draw out parking spaces for each car
- Assign each spot a letter
- Grab 26 toy cars and attach pieces of paper with a letter on each one. Now each toy car matches a parking space.
Kids can work on letter identification by matching the cars to their parking spaces or you can print out larger letters and hide them around the room for your child to drive to.
To see how this idea works for teaching sight words, click here.
Working math practice in during the day is easy and fun with these three ideas!
Freeze Dance
To help your little one learn their numbers and have some fun, try playing Freeze Dance.
To play:
- Pop in a Jumpin' Numbers CD and start dancing!
- Set the music player on a timer or just hit pause at random intervals.
- When the music stops, have your little one tell you the name of the number the song was singing about and count it out on their fingers.
- Blast the music again and keep playing!
Number Photo Shoot
Do your kids love taking pictures with your smart phone? Put that time to good use and have them snap photos of numbers around the house or neighborhood. Challenge your child to take pictures of the numbers 0-10 in order. Have your child see if they can find more 5's or 2's throughout the house. If you are able, print the photos and make a counting book so they can review their numbers and hard work over and over again.
Jumpin' Numbers Bingo
We have a great downloadable resource on our website for Jumpin' Numbers Bingo!
This is a fantastic game to take to play while waiting at restaurants, in doctors offices, or to enjoy on summer camping trips.
The download includes cards to print at home that will help teach your child the numbers 0-10 and all the shapes included on the Jumpin' Numbers and Shakin' Shapes DVD. It is a fun way to drill those math skills!
Here are two great ways of helping your child learn about rhyming words and sounds.
Rhyming Basket
This idea comes from the website The Imagination Tree.
To play this game at home, fill a basket with pairs of toys that rhyme. For instance a small doll's coat would be the rhyming pair for a toy boat. Have your child spend time finding all the rhyming pairs and line them up. Review the pairs with your child and see if they can come up with even more rhyming words to go with each object.
Listening Detective
Reading with your child is always a great way to help them build literacy skills. To help them learn to identify rhyming words teach them to be a listening detective. Start by reading through a book that has rhyming words, board books are a great tool for this. When you reach a page that has rhyming words point them out to your child. On the second read through, have your child tell you which words rhyme. On the third read through, have your child mark the rhyming words with a post-it note or sticky flag so that they can review the rhymes on their own.
---------------------------
Looking for more learn at home ideas? Check out our previous Summer School at Home with Heidisongs: Getting Ready for Kindergarten posts!
-Heidi
----------------------------------
Follow me! Did you enjoy this post? Do me a favor and share it with your friends! And follow this blog by signing up for my email updates here, or follow on Bloglovin', or follow me on TPT! I'm also on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube, too! Don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter for special deals and promo codes that you won't find out about anywhere else.
