Week of June 15, 2020

Mindful Monday Talk about how different types of weather make you feel. How does a sunny day make you feel ? How about a rainy day ? What types of activities can you do in different types of weather ? Is there are any types of weather we do not get in San Diego, such as snow ?   What kinds of clothing would you need in each type of weather ? Now relate feeling angry to a tornado and explain to your child that if he or she ever feels like that he or she can close their eyes, take a deep breath and imagine a warm sunny day. You can al so help your child to name his or her feelings so they can begin to understand how to tame them. 

Tuesday PLAY Let’s make up a story! Create “storytelling dice” to develop a new fun story with every roll! Start by taking two cube shaped boxes (repurposing empty tissue boxes works well) and cover them with paper. Put pictures of objects on the first die and pictures of places on the second die. When you roll the dice, make a sentence incorporating the picture and setting from the dice.  The sentence could say something like “The cat went to the fire station,” or “The bear wants to mail letters at the post office.” There are many ways to use cubed shaped boxes. If your child is learning beginning sounds, you can replace the pictures with letters and have them say a word that begins with the letter that appears. You can even make up a sentence with words. If they rolled a K and an H, you can say the “Koala wears a hat." GROW Game playing and social interaction helps with emerging conversation and storytelling. For more on storytelling and early childhood development visit https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/1057-storytelling-in-the-first-three-years.

Wednesday PLAY Grab your Smarty Patch Learning Kit for this week and let’s start a journal! Writing or drawing in a journal can open the door to your child’s imagination. If your child cannot write yet, invite he or she to draw pictures. Start by journaling about something that interests your child. Give them prompts to spark their imagination and get them thinking. Write or draw about a book you recently read to them or an outing you took to the park or beach. To encourage writing, have your child share with you what he or she drew and then you can help figure out words, such as park. You can also have your child trace words in the journal. GROW Phonics awareness is the understanding of sounds letters make and being able to recognize sounds in spoken language. It is essential to pre-reading. Before your child can even sound out letters, he or she is working on pre-reading skills. 

Thursday PLAY Go on a nature hunt and gather several natural items such as sticks, rocks, and leaves. Use the items found outside to create a sculpture or picture. For example, you can use a large rock for a face, two leaves for eyes, a pebble for a nose, and a stick for a mouth. Be creative! You can also line up many leaves or pebbles in the shape of a circle, triangle, or square. Talk about how many sides the shapes have or what type of picture your child has created.   Check out this website to see how to use natural loose parts to play and learn: https://fairydustteachin g.com/2017/10/loose-parts-lets-play-with-nature/ GROW Using lots of materials exposes children to various shapes and help them analyze two- and three-dimensional shapes in various sizes and orientations. Sliding, flipping, or turning shapes promote problem solving and an understanding of transformations. These transformations are crucial to developing spatial visualization abilities and understanding geometry, which involves matching shapes through visualization. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/apr2014/discovering-shapes-and-space-preschool

Friday PLAY Counting time! Use dominoes, dice, or draw dots on paper. Have your child count the dots. If they can count the dots with ease, have your child add two groups of dots together . Next roll the dice or choose a domino or set of dots. If your child get a 3, allow your child to count out 3 items, such as crayons or toy cars. If they can do that easily, have your child count out two sets of objects, then add the two groups together to get a total. Say “two dots plus one dot equals three dots” to give your child the mathematical language to begin understanding addition.  GROW Math opportunities exist all around us. By using dice or dominoes for number recognition, your child is learning to subitize. Subitizing is the ability to glance at a group of objects, and recognize how many there are without counting. Looking at the groups and patterns of the dots will trains the brain to recognize amounts without counting. Over time he or she will begin to subitize, allowing them to automatically know how many without counting.  See this video link for a fun song by Jack Hartmann about subitizing!   https://youtu.be/xZnEc8yA7Js

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