Phonemic Awareness Activities
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Read, listen to, and sing nursery rhymes
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Play with words and change the beginning or ending sound. Nonsense words are fun too! Examples:
Getting Ready to Read
Keeping Your Child Safe
For safety reasons, it is helpful for your child to know the following information:
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Their first and last name
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Their parent or guardian’s first and last name (A lost child in a store is asked, “What is your mom’s name?” The child responds, “Mom!”)
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The phone number most used
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Their street address and the town they live in
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Their birth date
Math Readiness
High-quality mathematics throughout early childhood does not involve pushing elementary arithmetic onto younger children. Instead, good education allows children to experience mathematics as they play in and explore their world.
Math is not a race; all children will build their skills with the appropriate support, yet they are going to be at different stages just as they are at different stages in their reading.
If you think of yourself as “not a math person,” please try to keep this to yourself. Your feelings about math can extend to your child’s negative perception of math and their abilities. It takes a village to create a math-confident kid, and it’s better if that village is not anxious.
Reasoning starts from the earliest stages of child development. Examples of beginning ideas of reasoning with numbers include
- stacking blocks
- counting objects
- filling containers
As children transition into kindergarten, it is important to provide opportunities to build a foundation that mathematics is about making sense with numbers and number relationships from the very first day. These foundational ideas can all be extended to larger numbers, operations, basic facts, and computation.
Early Numeracy
Early numerical knowledge includes four interrelated aspects: subitizing, verbal counting, object counting, and cardinality.
Subitizing: The instant, intuitive recognition of quantities up to 4 or 5 is called subitizing. As young as 3 years old, children develop the ability to recognize small, familiar quantities without counting (often before the ability to count is even present). Four-year-olds recognize collections up to four, and then subitizing and counting become connected.
Begin naming small collections with numbers to help children build connections between a quantity and its name. Games that use dice are an excellent way to give kids practice subitizing up to 6 as well as combining subitized amounts into larger, familiar quantities (when I roll two 5s, it combines to make 10).
Verbal Counting: Recital of the counting sequence. This often begins as a rote recital, most likely without an understanding of the meaning/value of the numbers or the significance of the +1 pattern. Eventually, we want kids to know that in the counting sequence, each number is one more than the last number they said.
Object Counting: Kids begin to count for a purpose and can connect one number with one object and count them with understanding (one-to-one correspondence). To count a set of objects, children must not only know verbal counting but also learn to coordinate verbal counting with objects by pointing to or moving the objects, tagging each object with a number word.
Cardinality: Kids can answer, “How many?” Initially, children may not know how many objects there are in a collection after counting them. If asked how many are there, they typically count again, as if the “how many?” question is a directive to count rather than a request for how many items are in the collection. Children must learn that the last number word they say when counting refers to how many items have been counted.
Playing games encourages strategic mathematical thinking as kids find different strategies for solving problems and deepen their understanding of numbers. When played repeatedly, games support kids’ development of computational fluency and have the potential to allow kids to develop familiarity with “benchmark numbers” (such as 10s, 100s, and 1000s).
When playing, there is no need to “teach the math.” Enjoy the games and the math will come.
Do not limit yourself to “math” games. Any game that utilizes numerical thinking while playing will encourage mathematical growth. Many games support this goal; below are some suggestions.
Math Books
- Anything by Greg Tang
- Bedtime Math (series)
Card Games
- Tiny Polka Dot
- Set
- Blink
- Greg Tang card games (can be purchased on Greg Tang Math website)
- NumTanga (there is a Jr. version)
- Numskill
- Tang Cards (like a regular deck of cards but with different representations of numbers - can play any game you would play with a regular deck of cards with this deck instead and build number sense at the same time)
Dice Games
- Yahtzee
- Tenzi
- Math Dice (there is a Jr. version)
- Dominoes (not dice, but dot patterns)
“Board” Games
- Chutes & Ladders
- Sorry
- Parcheesi
Patterns and/or Shapes
- Qwirkle
- Q Bitz (there is a Jr. version)
Problem solving
- Tangrams
- Rush Hour (there is a Jr. version)
Web-based games (all on www.gregtangmath.com)
- Ten Frame Mania
- How Much, How Many?
- NumTanga
There are many others on this site, try them out and see what is comfortable...
Thank you for your partnership as we work together to help all children grow socially, emotionally, and academically.
See you soon!
