The Connett Connection

Today marked the first day of Kindergarten.  We took it easy, only doing an activity every so often.  I'm trying to establish a routine so my daughter knows what to expect.  She thrives when there is a routine and I do too. We began by doing some calendar work.  She is still trying to learn her days of the week and months of the year. We then did some review work on the white board.  We are starting over with numbers to make sure she still remembers them all.  I also added a weather component this year since we did not do that during Pre-K.  She enjoyed looking out the window and drawing her own picture! I had looked at a variety of Kindergarten math curricula but most of them she already knew 90% of what was being taught since I taught her all of the number concepts and shapes in Pre-K.  The one I finally settled with, though loosely, was Eureka Math.  It is a free online curriculum.  I am using it as an outline for what...

So I have been playing around with Pinterest and trying to figure things out as all I ever knew about Pinterest was to make and post and repost pins.  I did not know how to do a lot of the fancy stuff so today I took time to learn how to make a pinable picture in my blog post! These CVC word puzzles are a great center activity for those beginning to learn about CVC words and those who are ready to spell them on their own.  There are two versions to use! The larger candy corn puzzles can be mixed and matched to form just about any CVC word.  There is a recording page included to record the puzzles the student creates. The picture cards are for students to spell the word on the cards.  There are 24 different word cards.  Students build the candy corn puzzle in the space provided on the card. I plan to use this center activity closer to Halloween when I plan to introduce CVC words to my daughter.  I'll let you all know how it goes! If you are int...

We still have a few days of summer before we go full swing into Kindergarten!  I was planning on starting this upcoming Monday, but she has been invited to go on a trip with her uncle and cousins so we may be pushing school back one more week just so she can go.  This is one reason I love homeschooling!  It can be so flexible!  We are still working on some phonics skills.  We've been focusing on words with 2 and 3 phonemes.  I am trying to show her how to segment and blend the sounds that she hears in these words.  We are struggling, but making progress! Today, we worked some with Elkonin boxes .  She likes the tactile nature of this activity because she can touch and move to say and blend the sounds.  These seem to be working better than the worksheets.  We did do one worksheet today where she had to sort the pictures on whether the words had one phoneme or two.  This particular sheet can be found for free at The Teachab...

Elkonin Cards are great for learning phonemes and segmenting and blending sounds. Students look at the card, touch each square for each sound in the word then trace the arrow as they blend the sounds to form the word that the picture represents. I have been using Elkonin cards for the last few weeks with my daughter to help strengthen some of her phonological awareness skills.  It has been a slow, uphill, road we've been walking, but she seems to be improving.  Hopefully as we keep working and focusing on the sounds themselves, she will understand more. This set of Elkonin cards has several uses: 1. Use the blank Elkonin boxes (page 3) and print out pages 4-11. Cut apart and laminate for durability. Please the picture inside the correct Elkonin box and use as you would any other Elkonin box. 2. Print out pages 12-36, cut apart an laminate for durability. Use like other Elkonin cards. 3. Print pages 4-11 and use them as a sorting activity. Sort pic...