Kindergarten

Give your child plenty of opportunities to count

• Playing number games during everyday activities, such as counting the number of steps, the number of trucks you see while driving, or counting the number of items going in the laundry. Many card games require counting and score keeping. Dice games and dominos help kids learn to quickly recognize groups of dots from 2 to 12. Also, dice or number picture card like playing cards help with addition and subtraction.
• Have your child distribute objects to family members, with each person getting an equal number or direct them by asking who has more than or less than other person.
• Read the calendar, and determine the number of days until an upcoming events.

Help your child recognize shapes and size relationships

• At the grocery store, ask your child to find items that are triangles, circles, rectangles, and other shapes.
• Ask your child to recognize or stack the groceries you bought by container shape or organize by size.
• Organize a scavenger hunt where your child has to find objects of different shapes.

Find ways to collect and organize information

• Have your child help sort the laundry by various categories — by color, or by whom an item belongs to.
• Take measurements for a project around the house using paper clips, strings, shoes, etc. The chair is 12 paper clips long.
• Using paper of different colors, make a paper chain with paper strips and tape. Encourage your child to create patterns by repeating colors and numbers of rings in a regular order. This also is a great way for them to adding numbers together and subtracting numbers by taking paper off the chain.

Help your child develop reasoning skills

• Help your child think about the permanence of a set. Put 6 object in a row, and then change the arrangement. Ask “did the quantity change?”
• Kindergartners love repetition and patterning, which fosters mathematical thinking. Clapping patterns help your child discover sequences and predict what comes next or of any sort movement helps to increase their mathematical thinking skills.

• Write each word out onto an index card and draw a picture of some words if that helps them to know the word
• Teach only 2 or 3 new words at a time. Tell them the word and then ask if they can say it, then come back to the same word again after
• Keep practice time fun and short- 5-10 minutes at a time. Best time for practicing is at breakfast, during homework time, and/or right before bed.
• Have your child look for sight words when reading to him/her. Look for them on restaurant menus, on road signs, and anywhere else you see print.
• Make it fun and play games to learn the words.

Slap it!– Lay out the words on a firm surface, call out a word and have them “slap” the correct word with their hand.

I Spy– I spy with my little eye a word that starts with the letter_______ and ends with the letter ___? What word is it? Or I spy the word____? Do you? Then have them point to it.

Form it– really anything with letters, like magnet, foam, cut out from newspapers, magazines, stickers, markers, paint, playdough, shaving cream, chalk, etc. Use to form and write their words.

Remember to treat learning new words as a fun and beneficial activity. Your child’s attitude towards learning will be a direct reflection of your own. Encourage and Praise your child often. Reward them with extra time with you and lots of hugs and kisses! A child typically needs to see a word 15-20 times before they have it memorized.