Kindergarten Ready!

If you read this post about carseat safety, you'll know my oldest will be starting school this fall.  Just like every parent who's ever crossed this bridge, I'm asking myself 'where has all that time gone?'  I'm so not ready for this yet!  But she is.  So it's my job to make sure she's ready in more than just willingness.  So, we've been practicing our upper case and lower case letters, letter sounds, counting, and simple math.  I try to make it fun for us.  Usually this involves a craft!

So, here's what we've come up with so far to have fun practicing for kindergarten (without spending any money):

 

I just cut out some t-shirt shapes with dots on them.  I purposely didn't align the dots so she wouldn't 'memorize' the pattern of the dots quite so easily.  She clipped the clothespin with the corresponding number.  Great start, but it only lasted a few days before she was beyond this.

 

So we moved to some simple math.  The same set of clothespins with numbers, I just made a two sided card.  This side had a "+" and "=" while the other side had "-" and "=" on it.  She could clip them on, add them up, then clip the solution.  The cool thing about this is that even though she hasn't grasped subtraction yet, when you turn the card over the clothespins that say "4+1=5" on this side will say "5-1=4" on the reverse.  So when she gets to subtraction she'll be able to see the two working together.

 



 



And this shape puzzle game was something the kids got for Christmas from grandma.  They love this game.  I always try to do something a little different, asking "what shape is the yellow?" "How many triangles are there?" or "what color is the square?" etc.  The greatest part for me is that she doesn't even realize it's educational!  It just fun for her, so she wants to learn. 

 

And now, we're working on a letter matching game.  Letting her help me make all the pieces and get it ready really gets her invested in the game and the learning.  I hope to have it finished soon and get some pictures of it up here.

 

Have a good week.

~Nicole