Your Kindergarten child is just about finishing the first quarter of school. Soon you will be headed to a parent teacher conference to hear about your child’s strengths and to discuss goals for the second quarter. One popular second quarter goal is to encourage more writing from our Kindergartners. How to do that? Easy. I am sure that you have noticed that your child has a longer attention span since the beginning of school and that your child is interested in more things. The way I like to introduce simple writing and simple reading simultaneously is with short patterned books. They are easy to MAKE, yes MAKE, no money involved and your child will love them.
Materials that you need:
• 2 sheets of copy paper
• Stickers of something that your child likes (i.e., a page of scrapbooking stickers full of items, like transportation, or princesses that your child likes)
• Pencil
Directions:
• Fold the two sheets of paper in half, staple together to make a small book
• Place a sticker on each page
• Pick ONE sentence starter from the list below and write the same sentence starter on every page.
• Your child will finish the sentence by writing the name of what is in the picture.
• Now you have a book.
Sentence Starters: USE ONLY ONE PER BOOK, WRITE THE SAME SENTENCE STARTER ON EVERY PAGE OF ONE BOOK, DO NOT MIX SENTENCE STARTERS.
I see a…
I see the…
I see my…
I can see a…
I can see the…
I am a…
Here is the…
More sentence starters coming tomorrow.
This isn’t completely related to the post, but how common is it (in your experience) to have a child who writes with both the left and right hands? My daughter seems to switch back and forth. I have asked if it is due to fatigue and she says no. She’s a little neater with her right hand, but not much. Should I encourage her to “pick a hand?”
it is very common in kindergarten to go back and forth between hands, the brain is deciding upon a dominant hand. At the moment this is not an issue, I believe as the year progresses she will end up choosing a hand all on her own.
This was a great idea. I will definitely try it.
Thank you a lot,
Bunch
good luck making some books for your child and if you need more specific help, just let me know. Thanks for reading the blog!
Claire
Found this site very helpful in planning ways to introduce my thriving three year old into the world of reading and recognizing these beginning words.
Thank you so much. I look forward to reading & learning more each day.
Thanks for taking the time to write…I stopped writing the blog last June when I moved to 1st grade, however, there are about 180 blogs to read on my site and I continue to have over 100 visitors per day…must be some timeless info.
Claire