Pre-K Math and Phonics Summer Review

Hi!

As I write this post my sweet preschooler is asleep after a weekend full of fun. I can't believe that she will be in kindergarten in just a few short weeks, which is surprising since I have been thinking about it for the last few months.

When I do think on this change there are a lot of thoughts that go through my head as a parent, but I was most surprised by the ones that came in as a teacher. As a teacher I noticed that the expectations of what preschoolers are supposed to know by the end of preschool is very different from what is expected for them to know as they walk into kindergarten on day one. What made it even more interesting as we were looking at schools was that the expectations between private, charter, and public were all different. We eventually decided on the charter school that I will be teaching at next year and that led to the actual reason for this blog post.

I created a summer review packet for my daughter that was specific to the skills that I saw charter and private schools requesting knowledge of and public school teachers hoping their students had exposure to before walking through their doors. I did this so that my daughter could walk into her classroom calmly and not become overwhelmed by all the expectations. I wanted her to enjoy kindergarten and not feel stressed or anxious so below you will see and hear about some of the pieces that are in this packet.

 There are 44 days worth of activities in this packet that cover number writing and identification, letter writing and identification, shape recognition, color recognition, cutting skills, direction following, patterns, basic bar graph building, reading, and coloring. I used a variety of activities to ensure that it would capture my daughters attention and help her learn and grow.

For reading we try to read a total of twenty minutes throughout each day. If all our reading times add up to twenty minutes then she gets to color in an object on one of the sheets. Each time she fills up a sheet she gets to pick a special treat or small toy as a reward. 

For alphabet practice I created pages that require her to trace and write, sort, cut and paste, color, and follow a path.

For math I created sheets that required her to trace and write, count, color, build, sort, and order. The variety will help build her ability to identify the numbers and manipulate them. There are also different ways to use some of the sheets which I show you below. The more options you have the better the chance of you holding the attention of your preschooler.

When I have her write her numbers or letters, I have her use an eraser to put space between her numbers and letters. This way she is still practice but only having to 3 or 4 on each line which is less tiresome. We also use crayons and markers for coloring because it gives her options. For the ten frames I give her the choice of stickers, crayons, markers, or painting with a Q-tip. We also use paint for several other math sheets that you will see below.

The things I have shared are a few of the different activities you can find in the summer packet I created for my daughter. If you are interested in using this for your little one this summer you can find it here. If you have any questions feel free to ask it in the comments. 

Have a wonderful evening and fantastic summer!

Ashley

Princess Themed Preschool Activities

Hi Everyone,

Ok over the last couple of months I have found myself looking at my sweet girl through the eyes of a mom but also through the eyes of a teacher. The mom in me says she is perfect in every way and a beautiful blessing. The teacher in me sees all the other things and this is where my two worlds are colliding. I want to help her with the things she is struggling with, but I know that I she won't work with me unless I make it a little fun for her. So that brings me to what I wanted to share with you: princess themed preschool activities.

The last few months I have slowly been putting together little puzzles and activity pages with a princess theme to help my sweet girl practice those skills that she needs to have before she heads into kindergarten next August. She loves that everything has a princess, characters from a princess movie, or items from princess movies. It is making working with her fun for both of us. The first packet I put together has alphabet puzzles with upper and lower case letters, number puzzles with several different ways of showing the number, color puzzles, a fine motor practice sheet, and color coloring books. I also included the princess bingo game I made for her to play at home just because it is fun. Below you can see pictures of each of these items.

The second file I just created recently. This file has princess themed alphabet and number posters. The alphabet posters show the upper and lower case letters on the lines to show placement. They also have an image that has the sound that each letter makes. The number posters and 1-30 and show the number in a variety of ways. Below you can see a sample of what these look like.

With the alphabet posters, I printed them two ways. I printed them two to a page so that I can hang them on her bedroom door. We will point to letters and say what they are any time we enter or leave her room. The second way was six to a page. I did it this way so that I could hole punch them and put them on a ring. With them on a ring they can travel with me, which is perfect since we travel a lot over the next two months. The number posters are currently only printed six to a sheet so that they can be on a ring. I am not as focused on number recognition at the moment as I am letter recognition. Eventually I may print those larger so that they can be hung up somewhere in our house too.

These are just a few simple things that I have decided to use as a mom to help my daughter be ready for kindergarten. Links to both of the products can be found below if you would like to try them out. I am also working on a super hero themed set for little ones as well but that may not be available until after Christmas. We will see how the next few weeks go.

Princess Preschool Activities

Alphabet and Number Posters (Princess Themed)

Have a great day!

Ashley

Teaching the Creation Story - Preschool Style

I love teaching all things primary, but my favorite things to teach are Bible stories. There are so many amazing stories in the Bible and there are so many ways to teach them and integrate them into other subject areas.

This year I will be teaching Bible stories and their activities to my preschool age daughter. This is a first for me. We read Bible stories together but I have never put a focus on teaching it with fun activities and such before. I am excited to share these stories in a new way with her though.

The first story we focused on was the story of creation. I love this story, and there are so many activities that can be done along with this story. We chose to do two activities with this story. One worked on comprehension and some fine motor skills. The other worked on comprehension.

We began by reading the story from The Beginner's Bible. We read through it and talked about each day. I had her think of things that she notices for each day of creation to make it more personal to her. Then we began making our creation book.

The creation book had to be cut out and then we glued the pages onto colored construction paper. I then stapled the pages together to make it into a book. Once everything was cut, glued, and stapled we worked our way through the book coloring each page and reading the rhyme that went with it. Below you will see pictures of the process and some of the final pages.

The next time we talked about the creation story we read from The Beginner's Bible again and then we worked on mini days of creation puzzles. My daughter loves puzzles so this activity was a lot of fun for us to work on together and it was a fun way to review the story. Below you will see what some of these mini puzzles looked like.

Both of these activities came from a packet I created for my first graders several years ago. I just updated the file to include the preschooler friendly activities I used with my daughter. You can find these activities in my Days of Creation packet.

Ashley