Reading

To develop reading enjoyment and growth for young primary grade students (Kindergarten through first or second grade), it's very important to read daily at home.  Parents, you can help by providing opportunities for your children to read a variety of texts, on or close to their current reading level, and sitting with them to help with guidance.  Their accuracy will grow as they use strategies such as matching pictures to text and sounding-out challenging words.  If your child is struggling with a particular word, suggest using context clues. To do this, ask them to reread words or sentences before and after the challenging word to help them.

 

For grades third through fifth, students move from learning to read to reading to learn!  This is an exciting time when the love of reading can truly develop.  There are several comprehension strategies you can encourage your child to use during reading. These include making predictions, understanding inferences, and pausing during reading to reflect and develop questions or make connections.   Also, you might have your children paraphrase what they've read to help with summarizing skills.  This also encourages them to focus on the main idea and helps them discover the plot of a story.  

 

Writing

Like reading, writing is developmental and looks different in each grade level.  In the very early years, it starts with writing initial sounds, spacing between words, and creating an illustration to connect to the meaning to the writing.  In the later elementary years, students will develop a sense of organization; This includes an attention-grabbing introduction and thesis statement, paragraphs that support the main idea with specific details, and a conclusion that wraps-up the overall composition.  At any stage of writing, students need to be encouraged to reread several times to check for understanding and accuracy.

It's also beneficial to review any graded work sent home and have your child correct his or her own mistakes.  

 

Children also enjoy creating their own paper books with illustrations to support their words, writing "how-to" directions, making lists, writing steps to recipes, writing a letter to a friend, or writing in a journal about personal experiences.  The possibilities are endless, and the more students have a choice about what they write, the more they will grow to enjoy writing.

 

Phonics/Spelling

To help with spelling, there's a Jan Richardson resource called "What's Missing" that will be easy to do at home.  Using a dry erase or chalk board, write and display one word.  Next, rewrite the word, but erase one letter in the word, and then ask your child, "What's missing?"  Let your child write in the missing letter.  After that, erase two letters, then three letters, etc.  Repeat the procedure until your child eventually spells out the entire word.  Kids think this is a game, it grabs their attention, and they learn to look closely at  words!  

 

Additionally, look for consonant blends (bl, tr, st), vowel blends (ai, ea, oi), and similarities within words (train, plain, sustain).  While students may succeed in spelling words correctly in isolation (such as on a spelling test), they often fail to remember those same words when writing them in sentences.  To help with this, dictate sentences using the spelling words, and always have your child reread writing to check for accuracy.  They need to start sentences with upper case letters and end in punctuation, which needs to be secured by the end of second grade in most schools.

 

Another idea is to let your child be the teacher!   Write an incorrect sentence, and see if your child can find the mistake and correct it.  They can then explain the reason it is incorrect, which will help secure their learning. 

 

With any activity, the use of markers, dry erase boards, blending tiles, and online phonics or word games provide a variety of different ways to make learning fun at home.  Make sure to check out my page with online learning suggestions!

 

Fun Learning Activities for Young Students​

•  Recipes are a great way to learn!  Kids can create a "how-to" recipe booklet to help with sequencing and transition words.  Math skills can also be included to learn about shapes, fractions, division, measurement, temperature and more.  Plus, you may find out you have a good little chef in your house! 
• We know Legos bring out the creativity in a child.  Build a town and learn about the buildings and people in a community while discussing the differences between urban, suburban, and rural settings.  You can also use individual Legos as manipulatives to learn about fractions or create hands-on math problems at all grade levels. 
• There are lots of easy science experiments available online for kids to do.  Search online for how to make invisible ink, create a tornado in a bottle, build an erupting volcano, or learn how to make solar S'mores in the sun.  See my recommend websites for more information. 
• Have your kids write a letter to their teachers, friends or family members.  One of the learning standards in school is to learn how write a "friendly letter" in the correct format.  
• Build an inside fort using sheets or blankets, so your kids can read in the dark with a flashlight or just tell stories to each other!  If the weather allows, this would be a fun outdoor activity as well. Something about reading with a flashlight really motivates kids!
• Younger students study plants in science, and parents can help teach their kids that seeds need sunlight, soil, water, and air.  They also need to learn the parts of a plant, so it'll soon be a good time to plant flowers and observe the process.