Today's post is in honor of our youngest. She turns 5 today and is eagerly awaiting kindergarten next fall. In honor of her excitement I wanted to share with you what we have been working on for the last few months getting ready!
First, we found this great checklist for all of the things that she needs to know. It's very comprehensive and spot on! Click on the picture to go directly to the post.
To begin we started tracing the alphabet and numbers. This great idea was suggested by Jan Richardson in her book The Next Step in Guided Reading. If you have not read it yet, I highly suggest reading the pre-A lessons. Our youngest says the letter as she traces both the capital and lowercase. She does the same for the numbers. Click on the picture to go to my store to see it for yourself.
We've also really loved these ABC Cut and Paste pages from the Moffatt Girls. She gets to color the letter, trace it and then cut and glue different lower and upper case letters. Deciding which is upper and which is lower (all the while navigating different font types). There are a number of beginning learning products on their Teachers Pay Teachers page. They are great for parents just starting out working with their child, parents helping their child out, or for teachers. Click on the picture to go directly to their store!
Once she knew most of her letters we began practicing finding those letters in a word search created just for her.
To work on her letter sounds she has really enjoyed this Leap Frog Factory Phonics bucket. She uses it sort of like a puzzle and love placing the letters in. It sings and works on letter sounds in a sing-song way. This is a huge hit with our now 5 year old!
The most recent thing we've begun to work on is learning high frequency words. The first 100 high frequency words make up at least 50% of the words up to third grade students will encounter. We have begun looking at these words and playing matching games with them.
Once summer comes we will begin to work with her in a more formal setting to actually begin reading. For now, we've been very informal only working on her letters only when she is interested. We will post more once we begin! Happy Birthday youngest!