Holiday Activities

Helping your child or children at your carecenter prepare for school is not an extra item on the to-do list–it’s something that can be done with regular, everyday activities and with ordinary things you already have. This reading and writing kindergarten readiness activity uses an orange peel.

Do you remember being little and trying to keep the orange peel all in one piece? A friend of our family could peel an orange and somehow as the last bit came away the peel had the shape of an elephant, complete with big ears and trunk. I never did manage to do that. Maybe with a little of your help have your child peel an orange and then place it on a piece of paper. Trace around the peel. What kind of shape do you see on the page? Print  a sentence on the page and you and your child can ‘read’ it. This gives your child a meaningful experience with language and helps promote the understanding that squiggles and lines have meaning. These marks on the page are ‘talking’ written down; this is the fundamental concept for writing and reading. Wonderful learning in a simple orange peel. What shape is yours?

Taking advantage of minutes here and there in the day and piggy-backing  learning  activities onto whatever you are doing are effective ways to promote kindergarten readiness.

Today’s suggestion connects making a meal to some fundamental science. Think the picture on the right is pasta? It sure looks like pasta that’s perhaps been colored for an art project. Would you believe that it is a tremendously magnified picture of proteins and protein folds from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences? Astonishing, isn’t it, that genetic material inside us can have the same patterns that we see outside us, Or maybe, it’s not so weird that patterns are repeated. More importantly, patterning is a pretty fundamental skills. So, take out some pasta and look at all the different shapes and patterns. 

If your day has time, for a fun Christmas craft have your child glue some onto a juice can or other container. When the glue is set, paint it different colors. Once the paint is dry, white glue can be thinned with water and spread over the surface to make it shiny and harder. This dish can be used to hold pens, change, jewelry, etc.
Or just cook the pasta and enjoy it for lunch or supper. That plate of pasta may be a reflection of part of a genetic code or a pattern way out in deep space, or quite possibly, left-overs.
What patterns do you and your child see when you have a minute to look?

Decorations are great for tons of math exploration and kindergarten readiness. Sort and count how many balls, birds, snowflakes, etc. Which kind has the most? Are there 2 groups that are equal? Which group has the smallest number? Some decorations might be the very smallest in size but not the ‘smallest’ in quantity. Decorations have lots of wonderful shapes.
Decorations can be used to make patterns, too. And sequences: smallest to biggest, or biggest to smallest. Colors, sizes, shapes, vocabulary, quantity, counting–all of these are learning activities that can be done with different  kinds of  decorations. Deck the halls with fun and learning, or rather, the house! What learning fun ideas can you suggest?

Q. What did the Christmas tree say to the decoration? A. Keep hanging around.

Telling time is a skill. Understanding time is experience.  A sense of time,  just like other kindergarten readiness skills, is something that needs lots of meaningful experiences. Time can be confusing. 2 minutes of waiting time feels much longer than 20 minutes of fun. Time has lots of different parts, too. December begins tomorrow. Of … Continue reading Kindergarten Readiness – Sense of Time →

‘Tis the season…to wait in lines. These waiting time minutes can be used as learning time.  We can exercise thinking, even if bodies have to be still. For wee little ones, sing some quiet songs or have a stuffie sing the songs. For older kids, here are some thinking games: How many things can you think of … Continue reading Kindergarten Readiness – Learning While Waiting →