Set aside an area in the home for artwork to be done.
Provide a variety of materials for your child to use, such as: salt dough, found and natural objects such as wood shapes, shells, rocks, and sticks.
Encourage your child to use different tools, such as water colors, crayons, tempera paint, colored chalk, water based markers, blunt-tipped scissors, glue, and paper.
Have your child draw what he or she sees outdoors, on a trip, or in the home.
Discuss the different ways stories are illustrated as you read books together.
Praise and display your child’s art work in special places.
Instructional Technology
Discuss uses of technology in the home and community.
Help your child use software programs and download apps that are appropriate for Kindergarten, such as Pixie and Kidspiration.
Practice computer skills with your child at home or at the library.
Visit appropriate websites to help support classroom instruction.
Health
Discuss items in the home that are edible and those that are not safe to eat, especially medicines, household cleaners, paint, and glue.
Reinforce basic safety rules to follow at home, school, and in the community, including stranger safety and personal body safety.
Ensure that your child knows the address and telephone number of his/her family.
Identify with your child the adults to go to for help with problems.
Help your child practice skills of good hygiene to prevent the spread of germs.
Help your child choose healthy foods.
Encourage daily physical activity.
Language Arts
Read as often as possible with your child. Show your child how to hold a book and turn the pages correctly. Encourage your child to try different ways to figure out unknown words. Talk about books before, during, and after reading.
Before: Discuss the title, author, illustrator, title page, and dedication page. Predict what the story might be about.
During: Discuss what is happening in the story and ask what might happen next. Track the words with your finger as you read. With familiar stories, invite your child to read along with you or “read” to you.
After: Discuss what the author/illustrator did to make the book interesting to read. Help your child distinguish between a letter and a word. Have your child point to the first and last word on a page. Help your child locate the beginning and end of the story.
Read an action story or tale of adventure to replace an evening TV program.
Practice using the Super3 model for problem solving everyday life situations.
Read rhymes and poems to your child, pointing out the words that rhyme.
Help your child learn all upper and lower case letters of the alphabet.
Help your child learn the sounds for the consonants: b, d, f, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z, and words that begin with those sounds.
Allow your child to help you compose notes, signs, letters, and lists.
Help your child form letters correctly.
Encourage your child to write frequently and praise his/her efforts.
Provide an area for writing with special materials such as pencils, markers, and different types of lined and unlined paper.
Share letters and cards from friends and relatives.
Encourage journal-writing for special occasions (trips, family events, or planning a birthday party).
Allow children to make mistakes on a rough draft.
Help your child stretch out the sounds in a word, and write the letters for the sounds heard.
Encourage your child to write thank-you notes, invitations, letters to friends and relatives, lists of things to do, and items to take on a trip.
Library Media
Read an action story or tale of adventure to replace an evening TV program.
Practice using the Super3 model for problem solving everyday life situations.
Obtain a library card for your child and schedule regular family visits to the library. Encourage your child to participate in ageappropriate activities sponsored by the public library.
Look for computer programs that encourage reading.
The school system provides online resources to assist students (SIRS Discoverer and World Book Online). Check with the library media specialist at your school for access information.
Mathematics
Listen carefully to your child as he or she solves problems.
Help your child use mathematical thinking to solve real problems. For example, ask “Are there enough cookies for everyone to have two?”
Help your child use the words small, medium, and large to describe the size of objects.
Help your child find ways to describe how two objects are alike and different.
Help your child learn to count forward and backward starting at any number.
Help your child sort objects into different categories by shape, size, color, weight, texture, and other characteristics.
Help your child name and describe shapes regardless of size or orientation (e.g. a square oriented as a diamond is still a square)
Work on puzzles.
Explore the mathematics in books that you read with your children.
Use computers and calculators to solve problems.
Make mistakes a part of learning.
Help your child discover mathematics in everyday life.
Music
Teach your child to sing familiar songs such as nursery rhymes, play songs, and folk songs.
Help your child maintain a steady beat by clapping, tapping, patting, or stepping to music.
Draw your child’s attention to a variety of environmental sounds such as airplanes, striking clocks, automobile horns, birds whistling, and the sounds that household pets make.
Have your child distinguish familiar voices and describe them as high or low.
Encourage your child to move appropriately to music by marching, skipping, tiptoeing, walking, and swaying.
Encourage your child to move creatively while listening to music.
Physical Education
Encourage your child to experiment with movement through hopping, running, and walking in different directions.
Arrange for your child to have short periods of vigorous physical activity.
Encourage your child to share toys and play equipment with others.
Science
Talk to your child about jobs/careers that members of your family have. What got them interested in that line of work? What paths did they take to get there?
Encourage your child to observe carefully and to describe things in the environment, such as plant and animal life, weather events, and the movement of people, animals, and objects.
Help your child keep a journal about their observations using scribbles, pictures, words, or phrases.
Encourage your child to ask questions about the world around them. Help them to investigate their own answer to the question, or direct them to where they might find the answer.
Read a variety of books with your child, and allow your child to read to you. They can even tell you their own story using the pictures in the book. Be sure to read both fiction and nonfiction books. Find books in the library related to science and engineering, weather, pushes and pulls, and plants and animals in their environment.
Social Studies
Help your child make good choices in everyday life and discuss the consequences of his or her choices.
Have your child point out areas of land and water on a map or globe.
Help your child learn left and right.
Help your child identify different types of transportation in your community, and determine whether they are used for air, land, or water travel.
Discuss ways that children can protect and preserve the earth and be helpful to others.
Visit local businesses and discuss the good or service they provide.
When cooking at home, discuss where the ingredients came from (eg., flour from wheat).
Encourage Your Child’s Thinking Skills
Encourage your child to compare items, events, or feelings using vocabulary that is specific and precise.
Assist your child in predicting the sequence of upcoming events and describing past events.
Ask your child how he/she plans to approach an activity, and discuss the results.