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  • Archive for the 'Writing' Category

    Contents

    Ideas to Encourage Your Child to Read

    1st Grade Rocks!

    ABC Phonics Animation

    Great Site for Early and Beginner Readers

    Rainbow Writing, The Letter “A” and the Excitement Mark!

    Posts

    Ideas to Encourage Your Child to Read

    Thursday, November 20th, 2008

    This week I met with my daughter’s 2nd grade teacher for parent teacher conferences. There was a hand-out for all the parents about ways to encourage your child to read.

    Here are some of the ideas I wanted to point out:

    -Give magazine subscriptions as gifts (good idea with the December holidays approaching)

    -Collect simple recipes and allow your child to cook them. There are some good cookbooks available at the local library for kids.

    -Always leave lots of notes for your kids. Put them in their lunch boxes, at different places around the house, etc.

    -Play board games that encourage reading.

    -Buy your child books about subjects s/he loves – even if it’s something like Barbie dolls or Pokemon. What’s most important is that your child is interested in the subject and wants to read.

    -Read classic chapter books to your child at night. Better yet, read them to the whole family. My husband reads books like The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Harry Potter to all of us. We all look forward to this special time together at night.

    -Find internet sites and computer games about topics your child enjoys. My son has been interested in the weather since he was in preschool. (He’s in high school now.) He has checked the weather reports online since he was about 3 1/2 years old (no joke!). His interest progressed to reading and learning about the weather on weather related sites.

    -If your child is singing a song and doesn’t know all the lyrics, look them up with him/her. Let your child see the lyrics onscreen and try to read them. Every chance you get to have your child read is excellent no matter what the reason.

    -Buy your child books s/he’ll enjoy for the holidays.

    Some books my kids have liked over the years are:

    Captain Underpants Books
    Henry and Mudge Series (younger kids)
    Five Little Monkeys books by Eileen Christelow
    Magic School Bus Books
    Eric Carle/Bill Martin Jr Books
    Amelia Bedelia
    Fancy Nancy
    Guinness Book of World Records
    Ripley’s Believe It or Not
    Harry Potter Books
    Roald Dahl’s Books
    I-Spy Books
    Wizard of Oz Books
    Dr. Seuss
    Magic Tree House Series

    Feel free to add any good ideas or recommended series in the comments!

    -Mama Lisa

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    1st Grade Rocks!

    Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

    Miss Gellatly’s first graders show how a class can work together to create a meaningful end-of-year project. Here’s their poem that they wrote as a group. You can hear them reciting it in the mp3 below…

    MP3 of First Grade Rocks!

    1st Grade Rocks!

    We add and subtract.
    We learned all the facts.
    Our field trips were cool.
    Then we went back to school.
    Recess was fun.
    We run run run!
    We did all the math tests.
    And we tried our best!
    Miss Gellatly was fun!
    Her hair is like the sun!
    I will miss 1st grade.
    Hello Second Grade!

    Written by Miss Gellatly’s First Grade Class

    Many thanks to Miss Gellatly’s Class for sharing their poem and recording with us!

    -Mama Lisa

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    ABC Phonics Animation

    Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

    The ABC Phonics Parade is my first foray into the world of animation!

    We recorded Ms. Lupton’s kindergarten class singing an ABC Phonics Song. Ms. Lupton made up the song herself, to teach the children the sounds of each letter of the alphabet. The kids then drew pictures to go with each letter.

    When you click on a letter in the animation, you can hear the children singing about that letter’s sound. When you put the mouse over the letter, you can see a little animation of that letter. When the letter’s simply moving across the screen, you get to see the child’s drawing as it is. That seemed important to me. To let the child’s work stand out.

    So here’s the ABC Phonics Parade. I hope you enjoy it!

    Press the play button to start. It may take a few moments to begin, particularly if you have a slow internet connection. (You may need a new version of the Flash player to view this video, in which case you should see a link to install it.)

    Many thanks to Ms. Lupton and her Kindergarten class of 2007 for creating these fantastic drawings and for singing for us!

    -Mama Lisa

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    Great Site for Early and Beginner Readers

    Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

    My daughter’s Kindergarten teacher recommended a site called www.starfall.com.

    It has letter games, early reading activities and online interactive books. If you have a child in your life who’s learning to read, go check it out! My daughter really enjoyed it.

    -Lisa

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    Rainbow Writing, The Letter “A” and the Excitement Mark!

    Friday, October 13th, 2006

    It’s exciting to watch my 5 year old daughter pick up early reading and writing skills in Kindergarten.

    Right now they’re focusing on the letter “A”. How you write it. What it sounds like. What words begin with “A”.

    One of the interesting writing exercises they do is called Rainbow Writing. To do Rainbow Writing, the child will trace over a letter that the teacher wrote in marker beforehand, or that’s on a ditto. The kid will trace over the letter 5 different times, using 5 different colored crayons. It gives the letter a colorful rainbow effect, thus making the repetition less tedious.

    My daughter’s homework this week was to do Rainbow writing over a capital and lowercase letter A that the teacher wrote in a notebook for her. (Below is my daughter’s homework from last night – I enhanced the colors on the computer so you could see what I mean.)

    Rainbow Writing

    The other homework my daughter had this week was called the Letter Aa Mystery Bag. She had to find something that begins with the letter A. Then she had to put it in a brown paper bag labeled with an A. Then she had to come up with 3 clues to help the class guess what was in the bag. I wrote the 3 clues down for her and she put the list of clues in the bag. Today the class will figure out together what’s in the bag. (She put a toy ant in her bag. Yuck!)

    Mystery Aa Bag

    I thought that was a smart game to make learning fun.

    Lastly, my daughter told me yesterday about how she learned about the exciting mark and with her hand in the air she drew an exclamation point! I thought that was a very clever way to explain an exclamation point to a young kid, calling it an exciting or excitement mark!

    I’m excited to see what she learns next!

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    ________

    Copyright ©2009 by Lisa Yannucci. All rights reserved.
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