Reply to Former Teacher Nannies or ECE majors

Forum Index » General Discussion

Reply to "Former Teacher Nannies or ECE majors"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I do several different things, depending on the personality, maturity/attention span, etc.  In my experience, letter recognition is easier than letter sounds, so I focus on sounds first/more, and as we get the sounds, then I start with recognition, lower case first.

1. Puzzles
We do floor and wooden puzzles.

The obvious answer is an alphabet puzzle, and I start by handing them a piece and telling the name of the letter and the sound (short sounds for vowels, predominant sound for letters like c and g).  As they start saying the letter with me, I start letting them tell me the names by themselves, prompting for a sound as needed, then I move towards finding the letters when I request them.  We do lower case puzzles first, then incorporate upper case once at least half of the lower case are mastered.

The less obvious answer is to discuss every picture in terms of numbers, colors, shapes, and letters.  I see frogs.  How many frogs are there?  Lets count!  1-2-3-4!  What colors are these frogs?  I see red, blue and green!  F-f-f-frog.  Hmmmm, sounds like ffff to start.  Do you remember which letter says fffff?  What shape are the frogs' eyes?  Oh, they're round!  Which shape is round?

2.  Songs and chants
Kids learn the alphabet song and then can't say the alphabet.  I have had charges in the middle of elementary school who couldn't write out the alphabet without stopping to think.  So, while I do employ songs and chants, I'm a big believer in mixing it up, so that it's not just one song and the child has no comprehension of what they are singing.

If you pull up pandora, you can create an educational toddler channel.  I have 6 different versions (at least!) of the alphabet song, and because there are so many, they don't get used to it as quickly.  There's more comprehension when the same thing is sung to different tunes, with different rhythms.

I also teach several different chants involving the whole alphabet and sounds, and I have two full sets of chants that feature each letter.

3.  Flashcard games
I don't like to use flashcards with young children unless it's a game.  As they get older, we have several options: letter sort (child tosses all the cards in the air, then hands me all the lowercase, then all the uppercase, while telling me the names), letter match (child tosses all cards in the air, then hands me one pair at a time, while telling me the name), sounds like (child picks either lower or upper case, then tries to come up with something that has that letter at the beginning or end of the word, and for very advanced kids, they try to think of a word that we haven't used in the game for a while), etc.

4.  Magnets
Any of the flashcard games can be played with mixed up magnets, as long as you have both upper and lower case.

For magnets, you can get other magnets with pictures, numbers, shapes, etc.  If pick one or two other magnets per day, spell the word underneath, the child becomes accustomed to rearranging the letters to spell different words.

5.  Blocks
I start early with blocks, handing them blocks as infants and talking about the letters, numbers and colors on them.  As they get older, I stack the blocks while talking about them, and the child knocks them over.  Finally, the child can stack the blocks and tell me about what is on each.

6.  Workbooks
I do a lot of workbooks.  For toddlers, it's nothing more than coloring and talking about the letters and sounds on the page.  For preschool age, we start tracing, cutting and pasting, etc.  They're kept with the coloring books, and it's up to the child to pull out a workbook instead of a normal coloring book, but the child and I talk about the pages in the exact same way.  Because I don't differentiate and make a big deal of "doing workbooks," kids pull them out at least 50% of the time.

7.  Writing
I agree with 22.45.  Writing is so important!  More than that, I write notes to MB and DB, and they read them in front of (and sometimes to, depending on content) my charges.

8.  Reading
I start reading with my charges from day 1, and I talk about the book.  What happened?  How do the pictures help understand the plot?  What is going to happen next?  How do the words tell us what is happening?  How can we retell this with other words?  Why are the words important?

I also make sure that my charges see me reading.  This is one of the most important things, in my experience, but it's controversial with parents.  I'm a big believer in modeling what you want kids to do.  So, I read in front of them while they are doing something by themselves, and sometimes I talk about what I read.  I talk about why I read (fun, information, learning).  I talk about whether there are pictures or not, and why adults may or may not need/want pictures.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics