Your Preschooler and Kindergartner

Here are some simple activities to try with your preschooler (2-5):

• Look for letters everywhere. Ask your child to identify letters he or she sees on signs, in books, and on any kind of printed material.Read, read, read! Expose your child to as many types of books as possible.

• Flash Kids Alphabet Flashcards are a fun way to practice letter recognition. For example, put three letter cards on a table. Read one card aloud. Ask your child to point to the correct letter.

• Play rhyming games. Say a word and challenge your child to come up with a rhyming word to match it.
• Cook simple recipes together and allow your child to measure the ingredients
• Practice counting whenever possible—the number of steps from the car to the front door, the number of stripes on your child’s favorite shirt, the number of carrots on a dinner plate.
• Have your child sort simple objects—buttons, toy cars, pasta—by shape and color.
• Draw a basic pattern and have your child complete it.
• Go on a shape hunt. See how many circles, triangles, or squares you can find in your living room, in the playground, or at the grocery store.
• Use Flash Kids Preschool Skills books to reinforce concepts such as letters, numbers, opposites, and colors and shapes.
• Practice makes perfect. Use Flash Kids Ready for School Flashcards to review essential preschool concepts.

Kindergarten (3-5)

Reading:

• Recognize that sentences are made up of words separated by spaces
• Identify parts of a book, such as cover, back cover, and title page
• Identify vowels
• Recognize long and short vowel sounds
• Read simple, three-letter words
• Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text
• Memorize sight words, which cannot be easily sounded out or represented by a picture; examples include the, of, to, you, is, do, does
• Recognize new words can be made by changing letters in words; for example, hat becomes cat becomes bat
• Identify parts of a story, including setting and character
• Retell important facts and predict what comes next in a story

Math:

In math, your Kindergartner will be using numbers to count, add, and order objects. Shapes and patterns will also be an important focus during this time. By the end of Kindergarten, your child should be able to:

• 
•  Count to 100 by ones and tens
• Write the numerals 0 to 20
• Group objects into quantities of up to 20
• Use words such as before or after to describe a sequence of events
• Describe an object’s position using ordinal numbers such as first, second, or third
• Compare objects using the terms greater than, less than, or equal to
• Understand the concepts of addition and subtraction
• Use real objects to model addition or subtraction problems. For example, taking one block away from a set of three to show 3-1=2.
• Add and subtract using drawings to show the problem
• Identify, extend, and create patterns
• Describe objects in relation to one another using words like over, under, above, or below
• Tell how objects are alike and different
• Sort a variety of objects by color, size, and shape
• Describe, identify, and compare circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares
• Compare and order objects by length
• Compare two containers to tell which holds more
• Compare two objects by weight
• Compare events to tell which takes more time and which takes less time
• Put events in sequence
• Read a calendar using days, weeks, and months
• Make graphs and use them to answer questions

Here are some simple activities to try with your Kindergartner:

• Using Flash Kids Alphabet Flashcards, scatter several sets of uppercase and lowercase letter cards on a table. Have your child sort the cards into the correct pairings.
• Use letter flashcards to create a simple three-letter word. Have your child switch out one letter in the word to create a new word. Keep switching letters until no new words can be created, then repeat the process with a different word. You can try this game using Flash Kids Three-Letter Words Flashcards.
• Read as often as possible with your child. Ask simple questions about what is happening in the story. For example, “Where does this story take place? Who is the main character? How do you think the character felt about what happened in the story?”
• Practice high-frequency sight words as often as possible. Try Flash Kids Sight Words Flash Cards. Challenge your child to see how many of these cards he or she can read in a three-minute period. Have your child use each word in a sentence.
• Ask your child to draw a picture of a recent event—a trip to the park, a birthday party, or something funny or interesting that happened at school. Then ask your child to tell you about the event. Challenge your child to recall what happened first, next, and last.
• Put two objects on a table—for example, an apple and an orange, or a toy truck and a toy car—and ask your child to tell you two ways the objects are the same and two ways they are different.
• Practice addition and subtraction during snack time! Use small pieces of food like grapes, raisins, or blueberries to create math problems. For example, put seven berries on a plate. Ask your child to count the berries. Then have him or her eat three berries. Ask how many berries are left. Then have your child guess how many berries there will be if you add two more to the plate.
• At bed time, have your child guess which activity will take longer: putting on pajamas or brushing his or her teeth. Then use a stopwatch to time each activity. (This is also a fun game to play while getting ready for school or cleaning up after playtime.)