Supporting Your Child At Home! 

 

If I could ask for only three things from you as parents at home, they would be: 

 

1. Read to your child every night! I can send you hundreds of articles about how reading to your child for 20-30 minutes a day sets them up for greater success in school.  I pride myself on how much my students LOVE to read when they leave my classroom, but just imagine how rich their vocabularies will be and how big their love for reading will be if they get to read so much and so often at school and at home! :) 

 

2. Practice those kindergarten sight words! Once we master our letter sounds, we will be "tapping out" CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words like crazy and it's awesome!  However, your child needs to be able to recognize the 102 words by sight!  Their fluency and comprehension are diminished by constantly having to tap out words when reading sentences.  Sight words are tricky because they are pure memorization, and although we work with them all of the time, they are learned at home for the most part! 

 

3. Teach your child how to tie his/her shoes! :) Okay, this last one is a little bit silly.  But, it is honest to goodness something I wish that all children came to school knowing how to do.  Now, it's not because I don't enjoy tying tiny shoelaces and seeing all of my kiddos' new shoes (because I do), it's just that I have 25 students in my room who each have two shoes... that's 50 shoelaces to tie! It seriously cuts down on teaching time, so please practice this important skill with your child.