Fine
Motor Activities:
*Cut
pictures out of newspapers and magazines.
*Play
with small beads and building toys like Legos.
*Use
tweezers to pick up small objects.
*Knead
and build with Play-Doh or clay.
*Squirt
water bottles on the sidewalk outside.
*Create
designs on paper with a hole puncher.
Developmental
Activities:
*Practice tying your shoes,
snapping, zipping, fastening a belt and buttoning clothes. Also practice
dressing yourself.
*Do
a job or chore ... empty the trash, feed the pet, make your bed, or match socks
from the dryer. Being responsible for regular household tasks teaches
reliability.
*Follow
a simple boxed or home recipe ...
*Practice
saying your first and last name. Say your name five times. Practice saying your
parents' and siblings first and last names.
*Arrange
household items into categories to build organizational skills. Put away
silverware, groceries, sort buttons, etc.
*Learn
to listen. Follow one direction at a time. Can you follow 2 - step directions?
Can you remember 3 things to do that you are told? (Example: Go brush your
teeth, choose a book and climb into bed.)
Math Activities:
*Count
to 120. Practice verbally 3 times.
*Identify
numbers to 10 or higher ... even when they are all mixed-up.
*Practice
identifying shapes. Do you recognize a circle, square, rectangle, triangle, rhombus
(diamond), oval, hexagon, sphere, cone, cylinder and pyramid? Draw the four
basic shapes (circle, square, rectangle, triangle).
*Say
your telephone number 3 times. Write it once on paper. Practice calling someone
– use phone manners. Be sure to press the numbers yourself. Tell the special
person your phone number (example: grandma) and have them call you back.
*Say
your address 5 times - number and street. Copy it once onto paper.
*Practice
counting pennies, buttons, Lego's, spoons, or other fun objects. How many
blocks (or whatever objects you are counting) do you have? Draw a picture of
the object you are counting and then write the number on a piece of paper.
*Practice
math words ... Get some objects and tell which group has more, less; greater,
fewer.
*Physically
practice directional words: over, under; up, down; left, right; outside,
inside; above, below; on, off; in, out; first, middle, last; through, beneath,
next to, in between, around, etc.
Language Arts
Activities:
*Visit
the Public Library and check out books or find a book at home and have someone
read a story to you. Retell the story back to the person who read you the
story. Remember to include all of the characters in the story, where the story
took place (setting), the sequence in detail of what happened at the beginning,
middle and the end of the story, and what you learned from the story or what
the story may remind you of (inference).
*Say
the letters in your first name and practice writing your first name using a
pencil (3 times). Remember the first letter of your name is an upper case
letter and the rest of the letters are lower case.
*Say
your birthday 5 times - say the month and the date. Write it once on paper.
*Say
the days of the week (Begin with Sunday) and months of the year in order.
*Choose
a color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, pink, white).
Write the color word in its crayon color or
marker color on a piece of paper. Draw something that color.
*Practice
identifying the ABC's. Learn the upper case and lower case letters. Make or buy
some alphabet cards. Mix the letters up and say their names. Match upper case
and lower case letters. Practice writing the letters. Play letter concentration
(memory game) or any letter game you may have at home.
*Practice
the beginning sounds of the consonants and the short sound of the vowels. *Practice
the chants or songs associated with the sounds that we are learning.
*Memorize
the nursery rhymes we are practicing. Practice finding the rhyming words in the
poems. Practice any rhyming activities..
*Practice
pretend reading (memorization or telling the story) as you track words from
left to right and from top to bottom in books. Identify the front cover, title
page, and back cover, and know the jobs of the author and illustrator.
*Practice
Phonemic Awareness Activities: clapping syllables
(kin-der-gar-ten), producing rhyming words(bat-cat),counting words in a short
sentence that the grown-up says, matching pictures of things that start with
the same beginning sound, and oral blending of sounds (grown-up says 3 sounds
/a/ /n/ /d/ and child says the word "and").
*Practice
writing by copying books. Get some plain paper and have fun copying favorite
sentences or pages from Brown Bear, Brown Bear or any picture book that you
love to read over and over or have memorized.
*Practice
creating and writing sentences using the color words: i.e. - I see a brown dog.
The cat is black. I can see the red bug. Design a picture to go with your
sentence. A fun idea is to make a book using color word sentences. Create a
book using the same color in all of the sentences or create a book using
different colors. Just staple 2 or more papers together to create a book.
*Make a
list - choose a topic. Write a list of things in that group using your sounds
(not correct spelling at this time). Your list may be of animals, toys, family
members, foods, friends, places, rhyming words or anything.
*Illustrate
and write a story of at least one sentence using your sounds (do not worry
about spelling). Begin the sentence with a capital letter, use proper spacing
between words and remember to end with a period or exclamation mark.
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
--Margaret Mead