Pre-Planning for Kindergarten
It just dawned on my that August is just one month away. I am still heavily planning my daughter's kindergarten year and hope that I can get the year planned before August gets here. I already have to tweak her language/reading curriculum since we have found an area where she is struggling, and I want to make sure she has a good grasp of those concepts before diving into my personal idealistic curriculum I spent weeks planning for her. (I know it will change hundreds of times before we get through it as I continue to learn how she learns best and her pace of learning different concepts).
I did not realize how difficult rhyming words and phoneme segmenting would be. My daughter is not an auditory learner. She is very visual and hands on. I know this after our first year. She learned all her letters and numbers to 30 by watching videos that set learning to songs. I have spent hours searching youtube and other sites for videos and songs to help teach the concepts I am teaching in Kindergarten. I've save a list of songs that focus on rhyming and have her listen to them a couple of times a week. We've been talking about rhyming words and reading books with rhyming words, but after a month, she is just now beginning to understand rhyming. She is really good at picking out beginning sounds, but picking out other sounds in words is really difficult for her. (Any suggestions would be helpful! I've done all I know to do!)
We haven't actually stopped having lessons through the summer. I have found that if we stop for more than a few days she gets to where she doesn't want to "do" school. If we keep our routine, she doesn't seem to mind having her lessons. I don't want the beginning of Kindergarten to be a fight or struggle since the time she will spend doing lessons will be increasing. We had been having about an hour of activities with her Pre-K curriculum, which included a letter activity, a number activity, a book, a themed activity and one phonological awareness activity. I kept lessons short and focused the letters and numbers on more writing practice.
I feel her Pre-K was very effective. She learned all of her letters, the sounds they make and how to write them. She can write, recognize and count numbers up to 30. She can recognize about 15 sight words and various math concepts, like bigger/smaller, greater than/less than, simple addition and a beginning understanding of even and odd numbers.
At the end of next week, I will do her final assessment so I can see how much she has improved on her writing skills. I was so amazed at her improvement from August to January and am hoping for just as much amazement from January to June.
I used to teach Pre-K. I taught it for 4 years. I taught my little girl more in one year than I could even fathom to have taught the Pre-K students I taught in school setting. The smallest class I had was 10 students. I thought I taught them so much more than I was able to teach my classroom of 20, even with a helper. Class size really does make a difference. Having my daughter as my only student, I could very easily tailor all my instruction to her to help her learn the most out of a given concept.
I did not realize how difficult rhyming words and phoneme segmenting would be. My daughter is not an auditory learner. She is very visual and hands on. I know this after our first year. She learned all her letters and numbers to 30 by watching videos that set learning to songs. I have spent hours searching youtube and other sites for videos and songs to help teach the concepts I am teaching in Kindergarten. I've save a list of songs that focus on rhyming and have her listen to them a couple of times a week. We've been talking about rhyming words and reading books with rhyming words, but after a month, she is just now beginning to understand rhyming. She is really good at picking out beginning sounds, but picking out other sounds in words is really difficult for her. (Any suggestions would be helpful! I've done all I know to do!)
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| Home School Tip #1: Found a website or video you love? Save it with a QR code! I use a free site called QR stuff to create and download my codes. I then create a card with a short description of what the video is and store it so I can easily find the video again! I've downloaded a QR reader on my daughter's tablet so she can easily access the videos during her lessons. |
We haven't actually stopped having lessons through the summer. I have found that if we stop for more than a few days she gets to where she doesn't want to "do" school. If we keep our routine, she doesn't seem to mind having her lessons. I don't want the beginning of Kindergarten to be a fight or struggle since the time she will spend doing lessons will be increasing. We had been having about an hour of activities with her Pre-K curriculum, which included a letter activity, a number activity, a book, a themed activity and one phonological awareness activity. I kept lessons short and focused the letters and numbers on more writing practice.
I feel her Pre-K was very effective. She learned all of her letters, the sounds they make and how to write them. She can write, recognize and count numbers up to 30. She can recognize about 15 sight words and various math concepts, like bigger/smaller, greater than/less than, simple addition and a beginning understanding of even and odd numbers.
At the end of next week, I will do her final assessment so I can see how much she has improved on her writing skills. I was so amazed at her improvement from August to January and am hoping for just as much amazement from January to June.
I used to teach Pre-K. I taught it for 4 years. I taught my little girl more in one year than I could even fathom to have taught the Pre-K students I taught in school setting. The smallest class I had was 10 students. I thought I taught them so much more than I was able to teach my classroom of 20, even with a helper. Class size really does make a difference. Having my daughter as my only student, I could very easily tailor all my instruction to her to help her learn the most out of a given concept.
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