Sound Awareness

• Clapping out syllables in words & names.
• Talk about rhyming words ... "Do cat & hat rhyme?"
• Enunciate the beginning sounds of words ... "Baby starts with a b sound. Bear starts with b, too." Talk about first sounds ... "What sound does dog start with?"
• Read nursery rhymes and books.

Oral Language

• Read books to children, having children identify items in the books and ask them questions related to the pictures, "What is the mouse eating?"
• Give verbal play by play of what you are doing ... "talk out loud."
• Make open ended questions and statements, "Tell me about lunch today."
• Show your child three objects and ask "Which one doesn't belong?", or "Which ones go together?"

Alphabet Knowledge

• Label objects and places in your home. The word "blocks" on the basket your child puts blocks in. 
• Label your child's items with his/her name. 
• Sing the alphabet song. 
• Point out letters in books and print. M for McDonald's. 
• Provide opportunities to write and draw. 
• Provide magnetic ABCs to play with. 

Print Awareness

• When reading books, follow along with your finger pointing to words as you come to them.
• Model writing lists and how you use those lists (grocery list.)
• Point out symbols seen in the environment. STOP signs, restaurant icons/names, and product labels.
• Transcribe what your child is dictating to you about their drawings or writings.

One to One Correspondence

• Count objects in your home …“How many doors do we have in our house?"
• Have your child help set the table ... “Place one plate per chair."
• Using an empty ice cube tray/egg carton, have your child place one lego (or other small object) in each space, counting as they go.

Quantity Comparison

• Fill two same sized glasses with different amounts of liquid. Discuss which is more or less. 
• Make two groups of objects, which contain different quantities, and discuss size and number of objects in the groups and compare. (A group of 3 toys compared to a group of 6 toys.) 
• Use descriptive words when talking about items and groups, including: big, small, tall, short, little, more, less, many, few, etc.

Oral Counting

• Have your child count every day, modeling appropriate counting when errors are made.
• Take turns in counting with your child. Parent recites “1" student recites “2” parent "3" student “4”  
• Read books that focus on numbers and counting, such as Deep Blue Sea, 10 Black Dots, and Ten Little Caterpillars.
• Sing songs about counting such as 5 Little Monkeys.

Number Naming

• Point out numbers seen in the environment... “I see a 5 on that sign.”
• Play “Go Fish" or other card games. 
• Provide opportunities for your child to write numbers, and dictate for them what numbers they have written. 
• Read books that focus on numbers and counting. 

Art is an important part of our curriculum. Every day, children find a variety of art materials available on our shelves. Drawing, painting, pasting, molding, and constructing are not only enjoyable but also provide important opportunities for learning. Children express their ideas and feelings, improve their coordination, learn to recognize colors and textures, and develop creativity and pride in their accomplishments by exploring and using art materials.

When children are engaged in art activities, we talk with them about what they are doing and ask questions that encourage them to think about their ideas and express feelings.

We are just as interested in the creative process as we are in what children make. We say things that encourage children to be creative and confident, such as:

• “Tell me about your picture” (instead of “is that a house you drew?”)
• “It looks like the play dough is sticking to your fingers. What could we do to make it less sticky?”

What You Can Do at Home

Art is a very easy way to bring your child’s school into your home. Children love to share their art products with the most important people in their lives. Take time to talk with your child. Here are some things you might say and ask:

• “Tell me about your picture.”
• “How did you decide what colors to use?”
• “What do you like best about it?”
• “Should we hang it up in a special place so we can all enjoy your work?”

You can help your child appreciate art right in your home. When you look at books together, talk about the illustrations with your child. Discuss the art in your home.

Art is something your child can do at home in almost any room. You might designate a drawer in the kitchen or living room as an art drawer, or use a bookshelf or sturdy cardboard box. Include crayons, markers, paper, a pair of child-sized blunt-edge scissors, glue, and a separate box for collage materials. Your child is much more creative and artistic than any coloring book allows.

The hardwood unit blocks you see in our classroom are among our most valuable learning materials. They come in proportional sizes and various shapes. When children build with blocks, they begin to understand math concepts. For example, they learn about volume when they find the number of blocks that fill a certain space. They compare the heights of their buildings and learn about geometric shapes (triangles, squares, and rectangles). When they lift, shove, stack, and move blocks, they explore weight and size. Each time they use bloacks, children make decisions about how to build structures and solve construction problems.

Children often use blocks to represent the world around them, perhaps a road, a house, or a zoo. As they work together, they learn to cooperate and begin to understand friendship. To promote language development and expand children's play, encourage them to talk about what they are doing. Here are examples of what you might say and ask: 

• “I see that you made a tall apartment building. How do people get to their floors?" 
• "Where do people park their cars when they come to the shopping center?" 
• "Would you like to make a sign for your building?" 

These questions and comments make children more aware of what they are doing and encourage them to try new ideas. 

What You Can Do at Home

You can encourage your child to learn through block play by taking an interest in what he or she does at our program. Please spend time in our block area to see your child building with and caring for blocks. When you take a walk in your neighborhood, point out roads and interesting buildings. You may want to purchase table blocks, colored wooden cube blocks, or cardboard brick blocks to have at home. You can also make a set out of milk cartons, which come in different sizes. Store them in shoe boxes or plastic tubs and put a picture and word label on the container so your child knows where the materials belong. 

Identify a place where your child can build and play with blocks safely. Props such as clothespins, small plastic animals, and cars and trucks will extend your child's play and inspire new ideas. The settings your child creates can also be used for pretend play. 

In the Dramatic Play area, children take on different roles and enact real-life experiences. They use props and make-believe to deepen their understandings about the world. 

Pretending is very important to your child's development. Children who know how to make believe develop good vocabularies, which are important for reading. They learn to cooperate with others, to solve problems, and to think abstractly. All of those skills are important for success in school. When children pretend, they recall and re-create experiences. To do this, they need to form mental images. For example, to play the role of a doctor, children have to remember what tools a doctor uses, how a doctor examines a patient, and what a doctor says. In playing doctor or other roles, children learn to cooperate with others and to share their ideas. 

When children make believe, we talk with them and participate in their play to extend their thinking. We might ask, 

• "Is your baby sick? What are you going to do?" 
• "Are you the storekeeper here? I need to buy some food." 
• "What are you cooking for dinner tonight? It smells very good!" 

What You Can Do at Home
You can encourage the same kind of pretend play at home as we do at school simply by playing with your child and providing some simple props. Draping a sheet over a table creates a house or a hideout. A large empty cardboard box can become almost anything: a pirate ship, a doghouse, a castle, or a train. The nice thing about dramatic play is that it requires only your imagination.

Here are some simple ways to encourage your child's learning through dramatic play: 

• During baths, offer plastic boats, cups, and rubber dolls and pretend together.
• Save empty food cartons, make some play money, and play store with your child.
• Read stories together and involve your child in acting out different parts.
• Collect some old clothes for your child to use to dress up and make believe.
• Say to your child, "Let's pretend we're going on a train ride. What do we need? Tickets? Suitcases? Do you want to collect the tickets?"

When you engage in pretend play with your child, you are teaching important skills and strengthening the relationships that are the foundation for all learning.

Although you're probably used to seeing your children splash in the bathtub and dig in a playground sandbox, you may be surprised to know that the Sand and Water area is an important part of our school program. Both sand and water are natural materials for learning. 

When children pour water into measuring cups, they are exploring math concepts. When they drop corks, stones, feathers, and marbles into a tub of water, they are scientists who are exploring whether objects sink or float. When they comb sand into patterns, they learn about both math and art. 

We encourage children to experiment with these materials. As they do, we ask questions to focus their thinking on their discoveries. Here are some examples: 

• "Now that we've turned the water blue, what should we do with it?" 
• "How did the water change when we added the soap flakes?" 
• "What can wet sand do that dry sand can't? What can dry sand do that wet sand can't?" 
• "How many of these measuring cups of water do you suppose it will take to fill this quart pitcher?" 

What You Can Do at Home
If your child particularly enjoys playing with water and sand, you may want to set up some play areas for these activities at home. Water play can be set up at the bathroom or kitchen sink. Lay a large towel on the floor, and, if the sink is too high for the child, provide a stool or stepladder. Outdoors, you can use a small wading pool, tub, or old baby bathtub. Give your child a baster, plastic measuring spoons and cups, a funnel, and plastic or rubber animals and boats. For a novel experience, add soap flakes or food coloring to the water. Don't forget about blowing bubbles with your child! Try using different kinds of bubble-blowing frames. Plastic six-pack rings, empty berry containers, and an eyeglass frame without the lenses make interesting bubble wands. 

If a sandbox is not available outdoors, you might use a small dishpan as a miniature sandbox. All you need is a few inches of fine white sand. Collect small items such as shells, rubber animals, a very small rake, coffee scoops, measuring cups and spoons, sieves, and funnels and offer them to your child, a few at a time. These props will lead to may hours of enjoyment.

 
The opportunity to play with sand and water on a regular basis helps children develop their minds and bodies in relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable ways. 

Toys and games include puzzles; various table blocks; small construction materials such as LEGO® pieces; board games; and collections of objects (including shells, bottle caps, and buttons). When children use toys and games, they explore how things work, use their imaginations, strengthen and control the muscles in their hands, work cooperatively, solve problems, and learn content area concepts. 

When children use toys and games in the classroom, we encourage them to talk about what they are doing. For example, we might say:

• "Tell me about the design you made." 
• "How did you get those rings to fit together?" 
• "Can you tell me how the blocks you picked out are the same?" 

Such questions and comments help children develop thinking skills. 

What You Can Do at Home
You play an important role by selecting toys and games that are safe, interesting, and appropriate for your child. More importantly, research shows that the most creative children are those who have had adults involved in their play. Here are a few ways that you can be involved in your child's play with toys and games: 

• Observe. Watch as your child plays and notice his or her abilities and interests. 
• Play. Follow your child's lead and join his or her play. 
• Imagine. Keep in mind that there is more than one way to play with a toy. Be creative! 
• Enjoy. This isn't a time to drill your child or test what he or she knows. Just have fun being together, talking, and playing. 

Good toys do not have to be expensive. You might collect various small objects such as buttons, seashells, rocks, and plastic bottle tops. Make suggestions, such as "Put all of the buttons that are the same color in a pile," or "Group all of the beads that are the same size." Encourage your child to tell you about the design he or she is making or to explain why things belong together. 

Playing with toys and games at home promotes your child's development in many ways. We welcome you to help us in the classroom by playing in our Toys and Games area with the children. You can see for yourself how much your child is learning there. 

We do a lot of singing and creative movement in our program. Singing and moving to music give children a chance to hear and appreciate different kinds of music, express themselves through movement, and practice new skills. The children love our daily time for singing together, and it helps them learn to cooperate in a group. Here are some of the things we do to encourage a love for music and movement: 

• We listen to many different kinds of music.
• We play instruments to make our own music.
• We give the children colored scarves and paper streamers to use as they move to music.
• We chant during daily routines such as cleaning up.
• Sometimes we take a tape recorder outside and play jazz or folk music. The children dance and act out songs.

What You Can Do at Home
You don't have to play an instrument or sing on key to enjoy music with your child. Taking a few minutes to sit together and listen to music can provide a welcome break for both of you. The music you share doesn't have to be strictly "children's music." It can be reggae, country, jazz, classical, rap, or any other music you like. Here are some ideas about enjoying music and movement with your child: 

• Children love a song or chant about what they are doing at the moment, especially when their names are incorporated. While pushing your child on a swing, you might chant, "Swing high, swing low, this is the way that [your child's name] goes."
• Songs and fingerplays help keep children occupied at challenging times, for instance, during long car trips, while waiting in line, or while grocery shopping.
• Songs can ease your child into tasks like picking up toys, getting ready to go outside, undressing for a bath, and so on. You might try making up a chant to the tune of "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush." Sing, "Water is filling up the tub, up the tub, up the tub...” or “Pick up a toy and put it on the shelf, on the shelf...”

Simple musical instruments can be made at home easily. You (or your child) may have already discovered that cooking pots and lids make wonderful instruments. 

Sharing music with your child is a wonderful way to build a warm, loving relationship. It's a gift that will last forever. 

Physical exercise and fresh air are important for your child's health and well-being. We take children outdoors every day so they can run, jump, swing, climb, and use all of their large muscles. They move around, breathe fresh air, and catch balls and bugs. They lie on the ground to watch clouds and birds, and they climb high to look down. We talk about the things children see, hear, touch, smell, and feel so they become aware of changes in the weather, the seasons, plants, and animals. 

Playing outdoors helps your child learn to:

• notice and appreciate the natural world
• discover how water puddles during a rain and disappears when the sun comes out
• follow shadows
• use his or her body in increasingly skillful ways

We encourage children to wonder about what they see by asking questions like these:

• “What do you notice?"
• "Where do you think the birds are going?"
• "How are the flowers different? How are they the same?"

What You Can Do at Home
Fresh air and exercise are very important to your child's health and to yours. Try to spend time with your child outdoors every day except when the weather is dangerous. Take walks in your neighborhood, go to parks together, and explore the natural world with your child. Watch what your child notices and show that you are also interested. 

Children love to collect things and then play with them. They sort them, make patterns with them, and pretend with them. Bring along a container or plastic bag when you go outdoors so your child can collect treasures (seeds, leaves, and rocks) along the way and bring them home to examine. You also can plan special activities outdoors. Here are some ideas: 

• Bring drawing paper and crayons outside so your child can draw what he or she sees.
• Take a pail of water and large brushes so your child can paint the sidewalk or fence.
• Bring colored chalk, which is perfect for sidewalk art.
• Play catch with balls of all sizes.
• Bring bubble-blowing solution and wands of various shapes.

Reading good books to children each day is a very important part of our class. It is a time where children gain the foundation for reading and writing. It is also a time where children can relax and enjoy the wonderful world of children's books.

Reading introduces new ideas, helps children learn how to handle problems, and encourages them to love books. As children listen to us read, their own reading skills begin to develop. Here are some of the things we do as we read:

• We look at pictures and ask, "What do you see?"
• We encourage children to predict what will happen next. For example, we ask, "What do you suppose will happen now?"
• We encourage children to repeat words, rhymes, and phrases they are learning.

What you can do at home

Research has shown us the important role families play in helping children learn to read and write. The single most important thing you can do is to read to your child every day. When your child sits next to you as you read, he or she begins to connect books with good feelings. Here are a few more things you can do with your child:

• Encourage your child to talk about the stories you read together.
• Use prompts like "I wonder what will happen next" or " I wonder why ..."
• Try to relate the story to something in your child's life ("That dog looks a lot like Grandpa's.").
• Point out letters in the text.
• Have your child tell you which letter is at the beginning of a word by the sound they are hearing.
• Give your child paper and pencils, pens, or markers. Let him or her experiment with writing. Don't worry if your child's writing isn't perfect!

When you take time to read to your child every day, you are doing the very best thing to help your child become a successful reader. Set a goal of having 30 minutes of reading time with adult support! Children can also enjoy books all day independently.

Participation

• Ask your child to help you with a task, such as putting away laundry, setting the table, etc. Acknowledge their help and efforts with positive reinforcers.
• Help to raise your child's self-esteem through statements that highlight the positives about them, such as "You have really great ideas to share!"
• Discuss when mistakes are made and how making mistakes is okay, and talk through how to use mistakes as learning opportunities.

Meeting Expectations

• Use the expectations and language of Be Safe, Be Respectful, and Be a Team Player outside of school. 
• Prepare your child by explicitly telling them what you expect during an activity so they can be successful. "At the store we will use walking feet and quiet voices." 
• Acknowledge when your child meets the expectations with specific praise. 
• Start a behavior acknowledgement system at home, similar to our classrooms. 

Peer Interactions

• Engage in community activities, such as library groups, parents as teachers, playgroups, etc. to give your child more opportunities to practice skills with your modeling and assistance.
• Play with your child at home, focusing on sharing toys, playing collaboratively, and using verbal exchanges.
• Plan playdates outside of school with a school friend.
• Model appropriate interactions between adults and other children, to assist your child in developing healthy relationships with others.

Problem Solving and Self Management

• When your child becomes upset focus on the reason for the behavior rather than the behavior itself. 
• Acknowledge the feelings and concerns of your child, "I see that you are upset." Or "Oh man, that's so sad." 
• Support your child during times of struggles. Let them know that you are there to help them find solutions. Provide your child with two possible solutions and discuss how they might work. 
• Model problem solving for your child when you encounter a problem using self-talk.