What Parents Can Do

Reading

• Read to your child as often as you can.

• Select books that use repetition to capture the rhythm of language, such as Dr. Seuss books, nursery rhymes and songs.

• Talk about books you read and the people, things and animals in them.

• Make regular library visits a part of your family routine.

• Encourage your child to choose the books you read together, and help your child tell the story from the pictures in the book.

• Hold the book so the child can see the pictures and words.

• Let your child see you and other members of the family enjoying reading regularly.

• Talk together about books your child reads at school.

• Provide a place for books in all rooms.

• Respond enthusiastically to early attempts at reading.

• Talk about everyday print, e.g., “We are going in here to get a hamburger. See the sign, it says…”

• Play with magnetic letters, and help your child to identify letter names and words that begin with the sound the letter makes.

• Ask your child if the events in a story could happen in real life.

• Provide and read together a variety of children’s magazines or other nonfiction reading materials.

Writing

• Play with language by singing, pointing out signs, rhyming words, and talking about words and letters.

• Practice forming letters. Have your child write his/her (first and last) name as well as the names of some family and friends.

• Have your child tell and illustrate a story. Make it into a book together.

• Listen attentively as your child reads his/her own writing to you.

• Encourage even the youngest writers to “read” their “writing” aloud, even if it is scribbles, drawings, or strings of letters. Talk together about the story.

• Read, read, read with your child every day. The connection between reading and writing is powerful!

• Share letters, greeting cards, and notes with your child.

• Provide a print rich environment in your home with a variety of magazine subscriptions, books, maps, manuals, e-mail, and cookbooks.

• Share different types of literature with your child, (fairy tales, poetry, family favorites, rhyming books) and other books that interest your child.

• Encourage your child to “write” notes, letters, lists, etc., using pictures and words.

• Plan a piece of writing together. Ask questions like, “How should we begin? What should we say?”

• Write a story together, then decide how to change it to make it better, add more details, etc. Use labels, signs, and captions.

• Provide writing materials of all kinds, colors, textures, and sizes: pens, pencils, felt tip pens, calligraphy pens, post-its—whatever will invite the exploration of writing in original, colorful ways.

• Point out capital letters at the beginning of sentences and punctuation at the end of sentences. Encourage use of complete sentences.

• Share many kinds of writing (e.g. picture books, songs, children’s classics, notes, letters, and greeting cards).

• Proudly post your child’s writing and always look first for what is done well in the writing.

• Help your child to use word lists or charts to find and check known words.

• Talk about a piece of writing and what you each like about it; you can use stories, letters, or both when you read together.

Mathematics

• Demonstrate the relationship of addition and subtraction.

• Establish one-to-one correspondence in counting objects.

• Read together math books, such as Anno’s Counting House by Mitsumasa Anno, and What Comes in 2’s, 3’s, & 4’s, by Susanna Aker.

• Use the words ‘longer’, ‘shorter’, ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’ to compare objects.

• Measure various objects by using non-standard units (hands, feet, pencil, pieces of cereal…not in inches, yards, etc.

• Compare size of objects to parts of the body, (e.g. longer or shorter than our feet, wider or narrower than our hand span).

• Describe and compare vocabulary such as corners, curves, inside, outside, right, left, below, and above.

• Look for things in the environment that are shaped like a square, triangle, rectangle, and circle.

• Play a “counting on” game with pennies. Place a pile of ten pennies beside an empty container. Put three pennies in the container, then one by one, add more pennies. Invite your child to count silently. Stop whenever you wish and ask questions like, “How many pennies are in the container now?” “How many if one is taken away?” Play again starting with a different number of pennies.

• Recognize patterns in everyday situations.

• Predict results.

• Recognize and copy patterns using sounds, objects and symbols.

• Use physical objects and numbers to show equal and unequal.

• Organize information to solve a problem.

• Play games together such as Dominos and Chinese Checkers that assist in creating or using patterns.

• Create opportunities to work together to solve problems. Examples of problem solving situations are:

a. setting the table for the family plus 2 guests

b. choosing the best size bowl for the leftovers

c. tidying up the cupboard by arranging all the boxes from tallest to shortest

d. measuring baking or cooking ingredients

• Sort and classify various objects.

• Recognize mathematical patterns in a variety of objects (leaves, trees, pictures, etc.).

Social Studies

• Use simple maps together including maps of various parts of the Earth.

• Look through picture albums and use the pictures to tell stories of past, present, and future events in the family.

• Discuss the reasons for rules in the family.

• Increase your child’s awareness of family and cultural traditions at holiday times.

• Give your child chores to complete and help him or her understand the importance of their contribution to the family.

• Make a learning experience out of a visit to the supermarket, gas station, airport, or other interesting places. Discuss what you see and hear.

Science

• Collect large, medium, and small items (e.g. rocks, buttons) and sort by color, shape, size, or any other characteristic your child selects.

• Talk to your child about how you use science in your daily life, such as using the weather report to make decisions about weekend plans, planting a garden, or caring for house plants.

• Encourage your child to pose questions, and allow them to answer these questions through reading or experimentation. Help them to record their information or observations and discuss their conclusions.

• Go on a neighborhood walk and find ten living and nonliving things.

• Discuss how they are alike and how they are different.

• Observe a variety of animals and trees. Discuss with your child how they are alike and how they are different.

• Help your child to begin observing objects in their environment and encourage comparing and discussion.

• Keep a chart of rainy, windy, snowy, sunny, and cloudy days.

Visual Arts

• Identify the colors of objects found in the home and environment.

• Find and discuss different lines in and outside the home (e.g. lines on wallpaper, fences, tiles).

• Collect objects that have interesting textures (rough, smooth) and provide opportunities for seeing and touching them.

• Identify shapes in the environment such as a square tile, circular plate, rectangular table, etc.

• Discuss and describe artwork from various times.

• Encourage your child to create things at home by providing crayons, paints, pencils, and paper and then share art with family and friends.

• Observe and see the beauty in everyday surroundings (gardens, forests, furnishings, architecture).

• Use lines to create shapes and help your child to name geometric shapes.

• Play some music and move to the beat.

• Sing with your child. Speak chants or rhymes.

• Say “Mother Goose” nursery rhymes together.

• Sing familiar songs that have several verses and a refrain.

• Help note the difference between a speaking and a singing voice.

• Listen together to a wide variety of sounds and discuss that different sources make different sounds.

Music

• Create a physical movement to match various sounds.

• Listen to various kinds of music and discuss how the music makes you feel.

• Show that musical notation moves from left to right like reading in a book.

• Demonstrate fast and slow and have the child move to show understanding.

• Reinforce various movement such as walk, gallop, hop, jump, crawl, and roll.

Physical Development

• Encourage active outdoor play involving balance, strength, and hand-eye coordination.

• Involve your child in movement skills of skipping, hopping, jumping, and galloping.

• Play games that encourage your child to move different body parts on command.

• Play games that demonstrate patterns and rhythm.

• Make sure your child has plenty of rest, eats healthy meals, and knows the importance of washing hands and covering their mouth when coughing or sneezing.

• Help your child learn their home address and phone number.

• Talk about safety going to and from school.

• Make sure there are Mr. Yuk (skull) stickers on dangerous items, and talk about what Mr. Yuk (skull) stickers mean.

• Look at product labels and commercials and discuss healthy choices.

• Visit parks, playgrounds, and swimming pools.

• Schedule activity times for the family.