Is anyone in your house getting ready for kindergarten?
As we leave our Early Childhood team that we have adored over the last three years, we begin our new journey: Kindergarten. Summertime is not only a time for us to travel, explore, and relax, but also to maintain and build upon our skills going into Kindergarten.
In our household, we focus on the following academic skills: basic phonics, counting, addition, basic math, letter formation, line usage, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and single speech sounds.
Here are our top 10 products for prepping for Kindergarten:
1. Leap Frog Scribble and Write: This is a perfect combination of technology and basic letter/number formation. This product will be going with us on our summer road trips!
2. PlayFoam 4 Pack (letters, numbers, counting, and shapes): This is a multi-sensory approach to practicing letter formation, number formation, counting skills, and shape formation. Another way to utilize these cards is by using Play-Doh.
3. Handwriting Without Tears– Transition to Kindergarten Workbook: This program is implemented in numerous schools around the area (my sons’ early childhood center is one). If you search within Amazon, there are multiple resources available within this curriculum– hands-on manipulatives and additional workbooks based on levels.
4. Scissor Skills Activity Book: This is a fun way to practice eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, and scissor skills.
5. Learning Bugs Press to Learn Phonics: We struggle with consistently identifying letter sounds. This interactive mat is perfect for daily review of letter sounds, along with phonic games.
6. See and Spell Matching Letter Game: This activity targets matching letters, beginning/ middle/ ending sounds, and CVC words in a hands-on way.
7.Party Hearty BINGO: Who doesn’t love bingo?! This game includes both alphabet bingo and number bingo. You can target matching, letter identification, letter sounds, number identification, and counting or even addition.
8. Hopeeye Dinosaur: This product also comes in a unicorn (other brands have other animals). This activity promotes number identification, counting, addition, subtraction, greater than/ less than/ equal to skills … and using a balance is fun!
9. Coogam Magnetic Ten Frame: This works on a number of skills such as grouping, sorting, counting, place value, addition, and subtraction. And, it’s simple!
10. School Zone Big Math Workbook: This workbook is great even as a resource to guide parents on what to teach. Great for on the road, at the dinner table, or even while playing school.
What are your favorite educational resources?
