Jen's Notebook

Patterns are great fun! And an easy concept to play with! Some of the easiest things to practice are color patterns. Can they lay ten beads out by the color pattern of red, blue, red, blue, red, etc. There are so many different pattern combinations you and your child can make up and copy. We tend to use alphabet patterns both with the kids and when we are writing down information or assessments. Here are a few examples: A B A B A B, ABBA ABBA ABBA, AABB AABB AABB, ABC ABC ABC, etc. Beginning patterns can be done with anything and everything as long as you have more than one of the items. Here are a few ideas of things to use: Food items (carrots, broccoli, etc. are fun), clapping and stomping, beads, any toys that you have a lot of such as Legos, cars, that kind of thing, silverware, shoes, socks, clothing, and so on.

After children know the basic patterns I listed above we will go on to harder concepts. Two patterns that we teach and use in kindergarten include skip counting and the growing pattern. If you are working on skip counting, please note that end of the year kindergarteners are expected to skip count by 10’s to one hundred. (so that is the perfect place for you to practice). After that I would go on to skip counting by 5’s and then 2’s.

Growth patterns are a much harder skill but can still be fun to work on. A growth pattern has one or more of the items you are patterning growing in quantity. Let’s use silverware for an example:

Growth pattern #1

Fork

Fork, fork,

Fork, fork, fork

Fork, fork, fork, fork

Growth pattern #2

Spoon, fork

Spoon, fork, fork,

Spoon, fork, fork, fork

Growth pattern #3

Spoon, fork,

Spoon, spoon, fork, fork,

Spoon, spoon, spoon, fork, fork, fork

Growth patterns can be done in any combination you want as long as one or more of your groups of items is growing.

All of this patterning is leading up to one concept in Kindergarten. We want kids to look for patterns in everything we do in math. That will eventually lead them to see patterns in numbers, and hopefully make it easier for them to figure out number problems later on in school. Enjoy!!!

Counting comes fairly easy to most of us as we practice saying those wonderful numbers over and over, but understanding what each number means can be hard to some children and often takes some extra time to learn. There are several ways your child’s teacher will check to make sure your child really understands what the value of a number means. Their ideas may be very different than mine but if you try these ideas out your child will understand the basic concept. I thought I would give you a few quick ideas I use to check students understanding or qualifying in numbers and how to work on these skills. Here are three ideas I will be looking for when school starts from each child in my classroom:

• Does your child understand the concepts of more, less and equal
• Can your child count on or count all of a group
• Can your child solve basic problems using 10 or less objects

Here are some quick ideas to try at home to ensure these three concepts:

More, less or equal to

• We all know this one just takes practice. The more you show your child groups of objects and ask which one has more? Which has less? The better. Try to ask the fewer questions more often, it seems to be the harder of the two ideas for children to understand. Equal seems to be the easiest, since children like things to be fair, so don’t for get to throw in a couple of equal amounts every once in a while.

Counting on and counting all of a group

• I covered a few ideas on ways to work on this concept in my last post. Please remember, counting on is a developmental skill and may not come to your child easily. Please don’t get frustrated or worried if your child does not seem to understand this concept. We will work on it throughout the school year. So go out there and count everything you can find, as often as you can.
• Remember to try to get your child to pull the items away from the group as they count. This gives them a finished group at the end and helps them keep track of what they have already given a number to.
• Teach your child to count backwards from ten to zero. You can also show them this concept by beginning with a group of ten objects and counting backwards as you take them away until your child is left with zero.

Solving basic problems

This sounds like teaching your child to add and subtract, and the truth is it is the beginning of teaching that skill. But I by no means want you to sit down and teach them addition and subtraction problems. I want them to begin to see groups or amounts of objects in a different way. The altogether part of these activities is very important. Here are a few quick ways to work on this skill:

• Count their fingers! When you count fingers show them a different amount on each hand and then ask them how many fingers there are altogether?
• Show them objects of two colors and classify them into groups and a whole. One idea I use in my classroom is with plastic beads. I may give them five beads. 3 will be green and 2 will be yellow. I want them to tell me you have 3 green, 2 yellow and 5 altogether.
• Make number combinations. If you have a bowl of two different colors of plastic beads lay them out on the table in a pattern going up or down showing the number combinations. Ex: 0 green and 10 yellow, 1 green and 9 yellow, 2 green and 8 yellow, etc. And then talk about what they notice.
• Make up subtraction type story problems. “You have three stuffed animals. I left two at grandma’s house. How many are here at home?”

Most importantly, make sure this seems like a game to your child. We want them to enjoy math and numbers. The concepts seem hard sometimes but it is important that they jump right in and try as hard as they can. Enjoy your Saturday!!!

Counting seems to be such an easy skill to teach as well as an easy skill to assess. As your child’s teacher, I am going to be thrilled if your child can count out loud to at least 20 when they start Kindergarten. My grandson learned to count by counting the steps up to my house and then back down again on his way out the door. But being able to count out loud does not always mean a child understands what that count or number means. So the second thing I look for is can your child count out objects accurately between 10 to 20 items. The third thing we are going to check for at the beginning of the year is, can your child tell me what number comes next from any given number under 10 without having to start at one (counting on). With these three goals in mind here are some ideas to help you practice counting with your child:

Counting to 20

• This is just practice, practice, practice. Count everything you can think to count. My daughter even practiced counting out loud with my grandson while he was in his car seat and they were going to the store. Remember counting out loud is just a rote skill. You learn it though memorization.

Counting out objects

• When I talk to parents about counting objects, I tell them to count out everything they can find in the house: pennies, beans, toy cars, Barbie’s, shoes, etc.. The most important thing to remember when counting out objects is to teach your child to pull the item they are counting away from the group as they count it. This will help them to keep track of what they have already counted. They can pull the items into another group, a line, a cup, or anyway they want as long as it is away from the group they still need to count.
• After they have counted out an amount ask them again how many do you have? At first they may need to recount them to make sure,. But over time they will begin to understand that the number objects is the same whether they just state what they know, or if they recount the items again.

Counting on from any given number

• This is a hard skill for some children. And until they really understand that a number is what it is whether you are counting beans, fingers or cars, they will struggle with this. What we like to see is a child beginning to count on without repeating the number you have given to them. Here’s an example: Teacher: “Can you count on from 5 for me?” Student “6, 7, 8”. We most often get the answer of “5, 6, 7, 8.” We really try to get them not to repeat the number we want them to start from.

Enjoy counting everything you can find!!! I know your kids will love the time spent with you working on their numbers!

Learning to write as a small child is a complicated thing to do. Learning to read is much easier for most kids. The main reason why is learning to read includes a child decoding (or sounding out the words as well as reading the words they know already) and comprehending what they just read. Writing includes making up your story you are going to write, thinking about all those sounds you already know, putting the sounds together to get them on the paper and then being able to write the letters just as a start. And did I mention they have to be able to remember that story they thought of in sequence to make sure they are getting the whole thing down on paper. Writing is a harder and more complicated skill to learn. For that reason alone I hope you will let writing with your child be an experience  and not worry about it until they start Kindergarten.  I will include the six beginning stages of writing at the end of this post so you know which stage your child is in and what to look for next. But only to give you information for the future school year. My suggestions for you in writing before the new school year starts include only a few things to do, while hopefully  making writing an enjoyable, fun experience.
•  Make sure your child can recognize (or read) and write their first name. If they can write their last name too, great. If not, we will work on it mid-kinder year.
• Give your child opportunities at home to write on paper and pretend they are writing stories. Lots of paper, markers, crayons, pencils, etc. are always fun.
• Give your child an opportunity to read their writing to you.
• Continue to point out writing features in books you and your child read together.
Make sure they are pretending and enjoying writing and that it is a big deal in your home. So, as promised here are the six basic stages of writing that children go through during their first years of school.
• First stage – writing as scribbles and marks on the paper
• Second Stage- scribbles on the paper begin to look like lines , rows, and circles.
• Third stage-your child will begin to make mock letters or letter-like forms on their paper.
• Fourth stage-your child will make strings of letters in a row. Or even all over the page of paper.
• Fifth Stage- Your child will write using inventive spelling. This inventive spelling will usually include a lot of beginning sound of words as they go through their story.
• Sixth Stage- Your child will use inventive spelling which will include beginning, middle and end sounds as well as some small sight words.

I think one of the prerequisites of being a teacher is you have to love to read! The same holds true of parents of little kids. Kids love to have a book read to them. It doesn’t start out as a love of literature but a love of having your parents spend this precious time with you. But the precious time quickly turns into a love of reading and all things about books. Let’s face it, even as an adult, there’s nothing better than finishing a good book.

As adults we often join book clubs, or share about what we have read with friends and family. Kids are no different. We spend a lot of time in the classroom sharing about the books that I read to them or that they read to themselves. Here is a list of ideas you can use when having a book discussion with your child while you are reading the story:

• What are you thinking about …
• What did you notice on this page?
• What are you wondering….
• What do you think will happen next?
• What does this remind you?
• I can’t believe that just happened, what did you think was going to happen…
• Why did the character do that, or act that way…

Here are some ideas for discussions after you have finished reading the book:

• What’s the main or big idea? Sounds big but it really is just a one to two sentence statement on what the book was about.
• Who are the characters?
• What happened to the character? And how did they solve their problem in the end of the story?
• What did you learn from the book?
• What was your favorite part of the story? Why?
• Did the story remind you of something in your life? On TV? In another book? On the computer?
• Can you tell me what happened in the story at the beginning? Middle? End?
• If the author wrote or continued this story, what would happen next?
• Pick out some beautiful language or important sentence in the story and ask your child, What did the author mean when he wrote___________________?
• If time has passed by in the story or through several stories in sequels to a book, How could we tell that time had passed by in the story?
• Was the character nice or mean? Good or bad? How could you tell?
• How did the story make you feel?

Most importantly read, and read and read with your child. It is such a great activity and their teacher will thank you for all the wonderful things your child understands about books when they start Kindergarten.