Speech, Language, Reading and Writing Milestones Resource

Hope your summer is going well! Here is a good resource for knowing what skills your child should have by the end of Kindergarten in the area of language development including speaking, listening, reading and writing. It's from the ASHA (American Speech, Language and Hearing Association).

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/kindergarten/

By the end of kindergarten your child should be able to do the following:

Listening

• Follow 1-2 simple directions in a sequence
• Listen to and understand age-appropriate stories read aloud
• Follow a simple conversation

Speaking

• Be understood by most people
• Answer simple "yes/no" questions
• Answer open-ended questions (e.g., "What did you have for lunch today?")
• Retell a story or talk about an event
• Participate appropriately in conversations
• Show interest in and start conversations

Reading

• Know how a book works (e.g., read from left to right and top to bottom in English)
• Understand that spoken words are made up of sounds
• Identify words that rhyme (e.g., cat and hat)
• Compare and match words based on their sounds
• Understand that letters represent speech sounds and match sounds to letters
• Identify upper- and lowercase letters
• Recognize some words by sight
• "Read" a few picture books from memory
• Imitate reading by talking about pictures in a book

Writing

• Print own first and last name
• Draw a picture that tells a story and label and write about the picture
• Write upper- and lowercase letters (may not be clearly written)

Summer Reading Program

    The summer is filled with house hunting, studying for a state exam, the beach with my little ones and staying with family so I won't be posting much this summer. I wanted to give you a link to all of the summer reading books and activities from last summer. Each post has an educational (and fun) book and activity to go with it.

Ms. Ange's Class, Summer Reading Program

Last Week Before Summer

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Birthday Large Group

Our students love having the birthday song sang to them and since one of our KDIs (from our curriculum) is knowing each other's names, this becomes a great activity for it. Pulling in name recognition (both in the curriculum and some of our IEP goals), we'll write down the name of a student on the white board and if it's their name they get to come up to the front to have the song sung to them. They get to pick what we do while we are singing the song to them (e.g. stomping, patting knees), flying like super heroes etc. Then each student that has a summer birthday gets a gift out of our birthday gift bag.

Afterwards, we will handout diplomas to students that are moving on to Kindergarten.

Hands are for Clapping

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*For students that tend to suck in when they're trying to blow,
the mixture is replaced with milk

Hands are for Clapping

We start the activity with this song:

We talk about things are hands are great for (helping, saying 'hi', getting stuff done, playing etc.) and what things we shouldn't use our hands for (pushing, hitting, etc.). We then play a rhyme game where we chant the following lyrics: 

Clap, clap, clap your hands,

Clap them just like me.

1, 2, 3, 4

Then place them

on your knees.

The students take turns picking what else we can do with our hands during the chant. Ideas include:

Wave, tap, squeeze, pat, touch, flap, swing, shake, snap

Depending on the time, we will sing the "Hands are for Clapping" song one more time.

Mixed-Up Chameleon & Space Travel

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Mixed-Up Chameleon

Reading the story Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle. This story is about a Chameleon that thought his life was boring until he discovered he could change his shape and color to look like other animals. In the end he discovered that being himself was the best. After reading the story, each student gets their own transparent Chameleon to take around the class and turn into any color or texture they would like. We then come back to the rug, talk about what we saw and emphasize that the best thing to be is oneself.

Space Travel

Remember our train obstacle course (click here)? This time it's the same type of course teaching the same concepts (Under", "Behind", "Through", "Over" and "On") but instead it's with a space theme. The students get to travel through space as they go from planet to planet in a loop around the room. The planets have numbers on them so they look for each one in numerical order before they finally come back to rest at 'Earth'.

Hide, Seek and Space Travel

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Hide and Go Seek- The Game

Now if you are thinking, "Now didn't this class just do this?", your are right. They loved it so much, and only half the kids got to be the seeker, that we made a list of who gets to go next and I promised them we would do it as soon as possible. As a reminder, here is how it goes:

We practice saying the 'Hide and Seek' chant as a class:

Lets All Play Hide and Seek

Cover Your Eyes, Please Don’t Peek!

Then We’ll Count From 1 to 10

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Ready or Not, Here I Come! 

Then we choose a seeker and all the other student's hide while they say the chant including counting to 10 and saying, "Ready or not, here I come!". (The seeker's favorite part is talking into the microphone!)

The student then looks for the other students and are encouraged to use student's names as they find them. As they are found the other students come back to the rug and we talk about where they hid emphasizing prepositions including "under", "around", "in" and "behind". We also used distant words like, "closer," "nearer" and "over there". Once everyone is back, we review it once again and then start with a different seeker. We have a list that they 'sign-up' for which helps us choose our next person.

Space Travel

Remember our train obstacle course (click here)? This time it's the same type of course teaching the same concepts (Under", "Behind", "Through", "Over" and "On") but instead it's with a space theme. The students get to travel through space as they go from planet to planet in a loop around the room. The planets have numbers on them so they look for each one in numerical order before they finally come back to rest at 'Earth'.

Mrs. Shirley's Flowers

Photo/Activity Credit: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2014/07/alphabet-activities-kids.html 

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Photo/Activity Credit: http://www.teachpreschool.org/2013/03/o-how-we-love-to-estimate/

Shirley's Flowers Large Group

Mrs. Shirley brings in a variety of flowers for the students to smell and feel. She talks about colors, names, smells and lets everyone have a flower to count the petals as they pull them off. This year, the students will divide into three groups at the rug to share flowers for feeling the roots, stems, leaves and petals, for talking about their smells and colors and discussing what ones that they like best. She will do this on Monday and Tuesday with a slight variation so all the students will have an opportunity to do it.

Speech Sound and Letter of the Month: S