Don't Stress....ideas are on the way!

My friend Renee called me yesterday after receiving her first set of Connecting Sight Words in the mail.  She was so excited to start utilizing them, that she neglected to read our set of tips, suggestions, and activities that are age appropriate.  She opened them up and bravely asked her 4 year old to....sound the word out!  Oh the drama and stress that occurred both for daughter and mommy. Teaching your child to read is not easy and you may wonder how to begin. Using our sight words is a great start! Sight words are pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and verbs that make up 65 percent of all written material. They are words that cannot be learned through the use of pictures or by sounding out.

 The first step of mastering sight words we have done for you, but here are some suggestions...

1.  We've divided the words into 5 groups. There are a certain number of words for each grade level.
2.  Begin by reading just a few to your child.  I started with 3 at a time and added to the list as he memorized them.

3.  Exercise your creativity and play games using the sight words. Some common games are bingo, word search puzzles, matching and memory games.

4.  Have your child read through them often. Encourage them to take the cards with them and read them in the car or while waiting at the doctor's office.

5.  Point out sight words in stories. When you read a story, ask them to point out the sight words. Choose books with sight words that they are learning.

6.  Offer rewards for learning sight words. Develop a rewards system. For example, for every set of 25 words that they learn reward them and move on to the next level.

7.  Create a sight word notebook. As they learn sight words have them write it in a notebook and develop a sentence using the word or tape them to the wall in their bedroom. This makes reviewing them a snap at bedtime.

8.  Most importantly....make sure you are having fun and that your child is feeling as sense of accomplishment and pride!!!

Infinity and Beyond

When children are able to count to infinity and beyond we often assume that's ALL they need to know. Although they may be able to verbally list numbers do they have the ability to understand and manipulate those numbers.  Can your child sequence numbers and do they understand number correlation?

In this simple activity, the boys are sequencing numbers 1- 20 using Connecting 1-100.  Another important math concept children need to master is Number Correlation. To practice his concept we asked the boys to find the appropriate number of Match Box cars to place on the circle. (ie.. the number 2 has 2 Match Box cars)   Here is yet another example of quick summertime activity to help prepare your child for school or to help retain the knowledge they've already learned.  We'd love to hear your ideas. What are some activities you might use for Connecting 1-100?