Sprouting Learners

Manheim Township School District is excited to work with our Pre-K families who are busy preparing their children for Kindergarten. While we are closed, we want to provide families with great literacy and math resources that can be used at home with our Littlest Streaks. Check out the tips, activities, and videos we have gathered to help you with this early learning adventure. Your efforts will prepare your child for school and help make the learning fun!

Click HERE to view a series of six short programs designed to help parents and caregivers to understand how they can use everyday interactions and materials found in the home to help their child prepare for kindergarten.

Each video explores a different domain of early learning and demonstrates ways in which parents/caregivers can foster skill development in each area. The final video provides guidance for parents and caregivers who have concerns about their child’s level of “readiness” for school.

Click HERE to find FIVE excellent literacy activities to do at home with your child.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW to get great ideas for building in letter names and sounds activities at home.

Try this at home:

• Have a letter for the day. You can write the specific letter (such as Aa) on a piece of paper and tell your child this is our letter for today.

• Go on a letter hunt: write the letter of the day capital and lowercase on separate sheets of paper. Hide them around the house and go on a letter hunt to find them. When your child finds one he/she has to say the letter name.

• Find the letter in books, magazines, and/or newspaper

• Teach your child the letter sound. Show them two objects (one that begins with the letter of the day sound and one that doesn't). Say the two objects. Have your child repeat the name of the objects and they pick out which one starts with the letter of the day.

• Use paint, markers, crayons, sidewalk chalk, shaving cream to practice writing the letter of the day.

• Go around the house and see if you can find objects that begin with the sound of the letter of the day.

• Go to YouTube to find songs about the letters of the alphabet. Usher has a really good one!

Children learn when they make connections between what they hear and what they know. One method parents can use to help make these connections is called a think aloud, where you talk through your thoughts as you read.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW to watch a video that models what thinking aloud looks like when reading to your child.

The following prompts will help you “think aloud” while reading to your child at home:

1. Connect the book to your child’s own life experience. “This reminds me of the time when we went fishing. Do you remember that time?”
2. Connect the book to other books they have read. “This story reminds me of the book Cinderella. Both stories are about sisters. Do you know any other stories about nice or mean sisters?”
3. Connect the book to big lessons or ideas. “This story helps me understand that we are all the same in many ways, but it's our differences that make us special.”

In these examples, you are "thinking aloud" many of the connections that good readers make naturally as they read. Modeling these types of connections will help young readers know how to do it when they read alone.

Click HERE to watch many Manheim Township School District staff members

reading their favorite books. We had a lot of fun preparing these read alouds for our young learners.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW on subitizing with ten frames.

More Ideas:

• Use a dollar store table cloth, tape on a rug, ice cube trays, or chalk on the driveway to make a ten frame.
• Place toys or plates inside to show quantity or roll dice and show the numbers in the ten frame. If this is too challenging, start with a 5 frame and build quantities 1-5.
• Lots more resources can be found on Pinterest or Youtube by searching “ten frames.”

Stem Starts Now is a digital subscription program that helps infants and children by supporting their parents/caregivers with regular emails tailored to their child’s age and development levels. Parents and caregivers of children newborn to age five in Manheim Township School District can subscribe for FREE by going to www.STEMstartsnow.com. Click on Join, then Group Membership and enter the code MT2020 for a free subscription. STEM Starts Now is sponsored by Owl Hill Learning Centers in partnership with MTSD.

Website: mtwp.net
Location: 500a Candlewyck Road, Lancaster, PA, USA
Phone: 717.569.8231
Facebook: facebook.com/manheimtownship
Twitter: @manheimtownship