JA SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES TERM 2

Give your home library a makeover. Try some spring cleaning of your child’s home library. Invite your young reader to help you make bins of the books they want to read and reread. You could sort by author, or by topics/themes (Books about Animals; Books about Friendship). Your child can help you write labels for these! They might be able to find the first letter and you can write the rest, or they may be able to work through the word and write the whole label themselves!

Give your home library a makeover. Try some spring cleaning of your child’s home library. Invite your young reader to help you make bins of the books they want to read and reread. You could sort by author, or by topics/themes (Books about Animals; Books about Friendship). Your child can help you write labels for these! They might be able to find the first letter and you can write the rest, or they may be able to work through the word and write the whole label themselves!

Read nonfiction books aloud. JA readers will be writing their own nonfiction books, and all writers get inspiration from exploring examples from practiced authors. Some great picture books that powerfully convey information through images and words:

• Power Up, and A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars, by Seth Fishman and Isabel Greenberg

• Hey Water, by Antoinette Portis

• Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn and Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring (released 2-18-20), by Kenard Pak (not exactly nonfiction… but invites good conversation about the seasons)

• The Airport Book, by Lisa Brown

• Baby Animals Moving, by Suzi Eszterhas

More emergent storybook reading and partner reading. At this point, your child has a lot of reading experience from the classroom in addition to their time at home. They likely have had time to read with a partner in school, and you could mirror some of this at home. You could invite your young reader to read you one of their leveled books, or a storybook that they know well. Another way to partner with your child is to read a book together, taking turns. The Elephant & Piggy books by Mo Willems are really fun for this!

Engaging your child with their leveled books. You could start by taking turns reading pages. Even though these books are very short and have minimal content, try your best to use the pictures and the words to have a conversation! Expect kids to read out loud and to point to each word as they read it as a tracking support. After you’ve read a book together, you can encourage the child to reread the whole book at least one more time, more fluently and without your reading every other page. This video shows an example of what it’s like to work with a young child with a leveled book: Partner Reading with a Leveled Book

Invite children to help make instructions for around the house. JA writers will be writing their own how-to books this spring. To support this thinking and writing, you could engage your child in helping you make a printed instruction book for feeding the fish, or making the bed, or setting the table. Keep these simple, with a line or two on a page, and the child can make a drawing for each step, and try their hand at writing out the instructions, using what they know of first sounds, working through a word, and sight words to help them. Here’s an example of a Kindergarten how-to book from one of JA’s curricular resources.

• Letters, Letters, Letters! Make letters accessible in a variety of formats and in many places in your home. The classic refrigerator magnets are great, especially if you are able to engage your child in letter play while you’re doing other things in the kitchen. You can do a kind of scavenger hunt with questions like “Find the “D”!” What letter does “sink” start with?” (Don’t try that one with “knife” 😃.) Bathtub letters that stick to the tub are also fun, and you can play the same kind of game. Keep the tone light and fun, and quit when the child gets bored or frustrated. No need to push - the whole point is to bring joy to this learning and to embed it in fun family scenes.

A bin of alphabet books. This can be a revolving bin from the public library, in case you don’t want to invest in many alphabet books. But the more of these books that you can have on hand for your child to look through and practice associating letters with words that start with that sound, the better! It helps them to transfer their understandings and solidify the connections they’re making between written letters, sounds, and words with meanings.

Online apps that playfully support phonics learning. Some examples of high quality online phonics apps are:

• Starfall: https://www.starfall.com/h/abcs/index.php

• Montessori Letter Sounds - Phonics in English, Spanish, French and ItalianMontessori Letter Sounds - Phonics in English, Spanish, French and Italian (on iOS devices only for $3.99)

Support students’ thinking about roles and responsibilities within a community. The second Humanities unit in JA is all about how people can positively contribute to their communities. They’ve been writing to express their thoughts about this in the school. At home, you could encourage your child to help make agreements within the family: about who will help with different chores, how to share space fairly, how much screen time is allowed. These agreements could be shared writing activities or conversations. Either way, it will help your child extend their learning to their personal life!

Find opportunities for students to study living things and the life cycle. The third and final Humanities unit in JA is Steps of a Living Thing. Children will learn about the characteristics of living and non-living things, and the process that all living things go through. As the weather gets warmer, you might consider trips to any of NYC’s zoos, including the New York Aquarium in Cony Island. Also, the Butterfly exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History is an excellent place to observe the life cycle in action!

Counting Fish The player counts small numbers of animated fish. Talk to your child about different ways to count the fish, perhaps by finding groups of 2 or 3 fish. Players scoring 70% or better will move to the next level. The directions are spoken aloud.

Counting Games Choose from an assortment of games: Teddy Numbers, Underwater Counting, Gingerbread Man Games, Ladybird Spots.

Number Frames Use frames to count, represent, compare, and compute. This free manipulative is available both as an app and online.

Number Rack Count and compare movable, colored beads. This free manipulative is available both as an app and online.

Ten-Frame Select from several games that challenge students to count objects, build numbers, or answer basic addition problems using a ten frame. A Five-Frame is also available.

Connect the Dots with Art Games Connect dots by clicking on numbers in order to make a picture.

Numerical Order Players order numbers from 1-10 (Level 1) and 11-20 (Level 2). Audio directions.

Number Bubble: Count to 100 Fill in the missing numbers by popping bubbles and dropping the number on the correct spaces.

Balloon Pop Comparison Pop the balloon to match a statement, either "greater number" or "lesser number."

Marble Math Players see and hear an addition problem. They can drag marbles onto a work surface to help them figure out the problem. Play includes five levels of addition, starting with simple 1-digit problems. Players must score 70% or greater to advance levels. Audio directions.

MathTappers: Find Sums An app compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, this simple, free game uses ten-frames and is designed to help learners make sense of addition. It's an excellent game to explore with your child while you're on the go.

Math Lines In this game, race to pair numbers that add up to a target sum. Before your child plays, review the pairs of numbers that add up to the target sum. You might even look at different ways to make the number using game pieces, marbles, or pennies.

Fuzz Bugs Number Bond Select a target sum and challenge your child to click and drop the missing number into the number bond at the bottom of the screen. Consider using 10 as a target sum or choose from another number from 5–20.