School

Every time we drive by a school, R asks "Mommy, can I go to school?" I try to explain that she just isn't old enough, but one day! I asked her if she would like to do school with me, and she gave an exited YES!
So I better be a good Mom and do some "school" with my child.


I went to Barnes & Noble to look for some books, and as I was looking through them, I realized that I could make these myself, and gear them more towards what I want her to learn, and what I know she needs to learn to be prepared for kinder. I used to teach 1st grade, before I was an adored Mommy....anyways... I used to make a lot of my own worksheets then too.

I'm starting with 3 things:
Recognizing and writing her name
Recognizing and writing letters
One to one correspondence (which means they can count objects correctly, by touching each one and saying the number)

If there is time, I really like to end our school with reading her a couple of books.

Here is practicing her name, I write it first, say the letters out loud and have her repeat. Then do it again, one letter at a time, and have her copy it one letter at a time. **Draw a line, or else she will write it seriously anywhere she wants on the paper. Then I wrote all our families names and had her circle hers, and she knew it immediately. - YEA!

Today was A day. We practice writing A at the top, then she has to go find and circle the A's on the paper. * Helping her hand over hand when first writing is very helpful!

Give her a treat if she works well (and sometimes she won't) then put it up on the fridge so that she can look at it throughout the week - mostly when she's bored while you're trying to make dinner.

When I taught first Grade, one great piece of advice my principal gave me was that First Graders need to change activities every 15 minutes, because that was their attention threshold. R is 3 yrs, so imagine what her attention time is! This activity took about 5 minutes. With about 5 minutes of prep time (for me) to make the worksheet.