During their time in kindergarten, your child will be working on letter formation, writing narrative, informative (how-to), and opinion pieces, and learning how to start to express ideas clearly in their writing. Kindergarteners learn their letter names, letter sounds, and use inventive spelling and sight words in their writing. While working on writing at home, if your child is spelling a word that is not a sight word incorrectly, it is ok! We encourage our students to be brave spellers and write down all the sounds they hear in a word. Each child is an author, and their ideas are important! By working on their writing, kindergarteners start to learn a skill that allows them to share their important ideas with more people.
Reading in kindergarten begins with sight words. Students quickly move to using picture clues to help them read one or two unknown words on a page. Once students have mastered the use of picture clues for unknown words, their readable texts become a bit more complex. Students learn how to use context clues within a sentence to help them read words that are not sight words. At this point, students are reading with fluency as opposed to slow finger pointing under each word. When having your child read a story to you at home, encourage them to point to each word with their finger as they read to help them develop their fluency. It is ok to help your child if they get stuck on a word; encourage them to use picture clues and the first letter in the word to help them figure it out. Kindergarteners love having stories read to them for enjoyment, too. The more stories they read to you and you read to them, the better readers they will become!
Your child will be learning sight words throughout kindergarten. Sight words are critical to reading not only because they are used so frequently, but also because many of them cannot easily be sounded out or illustrated. Your child uses a word wall, which has all of the sight words that are taught in kindergarten, to help them while writing. This is an important resource for beginning writers, to help them build confidence and write more. You can find a kindergarten word wall to print and keep at home under "Reading, Writing, & Phonics Resources".
Below, you will find ideas for games and activities that you can do with your child at home to continue practicing the reading and writing skills they are working on at school. If you have any questions about an activity or game that is listed, please reach out to your teacher for additional directions or clarification.
Label Everything: Create labels with your child for different objects in your home, like books, toy bins, foods, kitchen objects, and clothes. Your child can write the names of the objects, and your child can draw a picture to go along with it. You can also give your child Post-It Notes and let them label a room in your home.
Play Guessing Games: Draw a picture and have your child guess the spelling of that word, helping them sound out the word if they get stuck. Let your child draw you a picture, and show them how you sound out the word (or let them help you, if you "get stuck").
Create a Photo Album: If you have extra pictures of events or people, ask your child to label the picture. Glue it to a piece of paper so they can write a description of the event, what happened, who was there, etc.
Have a Letter Name/Letter Sound Treasure Hunt: When you’re in the car, at home, or in the store, ask your child to find certain uppercase and lowercase letters. You can also ask your child to find objects that start with a certain letter sound.
Have a Rainbow Word Wall Treasure Hunt: Ask your child to find words from their word wall in magazines, books, or in their environmental print (words they see around the home and in their community).
Mystery Endings: When reading to your child, close the book before the ending. Have your child make predictions about what might happen. See if their predictions are correct when you finish the story.