Provide a variety of materials for your child to use, such as oil pastels, colored pencils, yarn, modeling clay, crayons, water-based markers, water colors, blunt-tipped scissors, paper, and glue.
Praise and display your child’s work in special places.
Work with your child to make drawings from observation, imagination, and memory.
Encourage your child to make artwork often that can be shared with family and friends.
Visit galleries and museums, and speak with your child about similarities and differences between other cultures and your own.
Visit the library and take a look at books that picture master artworks with objects which are familiar in the child’s world.
Instructional Technology
Discuss technology found in the home and community such as grocery store scanners, smart phones, Automatic Teller Machines, and electronic road signs.
Help your child use software programs and apps that are appropriate for Grade 1, 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
Encourage and model respect for others through actions and words.
Reinforce basic safety rules to follow at home, school, and in the community
Discuss how to respond to emergency situations.
Identify with your child the adults to go to for help with problems.
Help your child practice good habits to prevent the spread of germs.
Help your child choose healthy foods, and encourage daily physical activity.
Language Arts/Library Media
Read as often as possible with your child. Encourage your child to try different ways to figure out words. Help your child by saying:
What word would make sense in the sentence?
What parts of the word do you recognize?
Look at the picture for clues to the word
What sound would the beginning letter(s) make?
Talk about books before, during, and after reading.
Before: Discuss the title, author, illustrator, title page, and dedication page. Ask your child what the story might be about.
During: Discuss what is happening in the story and ask what might happen next.
After: Discuss favorite and exciting parts and meanings of new words. Discuss what the author or illustrator did to make the book interesting to read.
Encourage your child to independently read at least 25 books annually.
Encourage your child to write often.
Provide an area in your home for writing with special materials (pencils, different types of paper, markers, envelopes).
Praise your child’s writing.
Share letters and cards from friends and relatives with your child.
Encourage journal writing for special occasions (trips, family events, planning a birthday party).
Have your child help you compose shopping lists, notes and letters to friends, and invitations.
Encourage your child to write stories.
Allow your child to take risks on a rough draft. Be your child’s partner for changing and correcting his or her writing.
Encourage your child to write thank you notes, invitations, letters to others, lists of things to do, and items to take on a trip.
Discuss ideas in books your child reads.
Read an action story or tale of adventure to replace an evening TV program.
Be a role model. Let your child see you read for pleasure.
Practice using the Super3 model for problem solving everyday life situations.
Obtain a library card for your child, and schedule regular visits to the library.
Encourage your child to participate in age-appropriate activities sponsored by the public library.
Look for computer programs that encourage reading.
The school system provides online resources to assist students (SIRS Discoverer, Culture Grams, and World Book Online). Check with the library media specialist at your school for access information.
Mathematics
Listen carefully as your child works through math problems.
Help your child count and identify numbers to 120.
Allow your child to use objects to solve math problems (beans, buttons, clothespins).
Encourage thinking and provide support when needed.
Work on puzzles.
Help your child measure an object.
Help your child learn addition and subtraction facts.
Explore the mathematics in books that you read together.
Help your child to tell time.
Use computers and calculators as tools to solve problems.
Make mistakes a part of learning.
Find opportunities to do math every day.
Music
Singing and Movement
Listen to a wide range of music with your child and discuss what is heard.
Explore the music found at home, such as records, tapes, CD collections, library collections, radio, and television programs.
Teach your child to sing songs that are familiar to you.
Encourage your child to sing and teach you songs learned at school.
If you play a musical instrument, play for your child frequently.
Encourage your child to explore and create movement which reflects his or her feelings toward a wide variety of music.
Encourage your child to make instruments at home and share them with classmates and the music teacher.
Help your child discover ways music is used in different cultures.
Physical Education
Encourage your child to jump over low objects, landing softly by bending at the knee.
Allow time for your child to practice walking, running, hopping, jumping, galloping, and skipping for short distances and in different directions and speeds.
Have your child balance motionless for a short time, first on one foot, then the other.
Arrange for your child to walk or jog for short distances.
Toss, catch, and bounce a large playground ball.
Science
Encourage your child to observe carefully and to describe things indoors or outdoors (plants, animals, weather, movement of people, animals, and objects).
Allow your child to observe objects through a magnifying glass and discuss what is seen.
Help your child make and explain his or her predictions about events that might happen in nature.
Assist your child in forming predictions and explaining ideas by using safe objects to weigh, measure, and mix.
Encourage hobbies (rock collecting).
Observe the sky during the day and night. Discuss changes in the Sun, Moon, and stars.
Social Studies
Help your child understand how people make and change rules within the family, school, and home
Explain how people from all cultures have the same basic wants and needs
Model good decision making. Show your child how to identify a problem, the goal, and how to choose the best solution.