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Get Ready for Kindergarten - Jumpstart Literacy Skills
Help your child prepare for the transition from preschool to kindergarten with some fun and entertaining learning activities that will jumpstart his or her literacy skills needed for kindergarten. Our fun, innovative ABC Twiggles resources and free Story Twiggle books will provide your children opportunities to gain self confidence and to develop the literacy skills they need to be successful in the kindergarten classroom. Remember that each child develops at his or her own pace and will have different levels of skills and knowledge upon entering kindergarten. So don't worry if your child doesn't have all the skills on the first day of kindergarten, as he or she will continue working on them throughtout the kindergarten year.
Literacy Skills for Entering Kindergarten
Most kindergarten teachers expect children entering kindergarten to have the following literacy skills:
Phonemic Awareness
Rhyming (Example: when asked what rhymes with “cat,” the child might say, “rat, sat, hat.")
How to help:
Rhyming is an important pre-reading skill for learning that sounds make up words. To help your child to hear similar sounds in words, play a guessing game. Say, “I’m thinking of an animal with a tail and two ears. This animal likes to dig and bark. Its name rhymes with the word "log." Do you know the name of the animal? Yes, that’s right, "dog." Dog rhymes with "log." Dog…log."
Read your children books that use rhyming words. An example is our Free Twiggle Book Stanley the Snowman.
Read the book together. For the second reading, pause before the rhyming word (example: "Stanley the Snowman is short and fat, Stanley the Snowman has a black ..... [hat.]." Let children fill in the word.).
Beginning Sounds
How to help:
- Make children aware of the beginning sound of his/her name.
- Introduce children to the sound of each letter of his/her name.
- Let children find items around the house and in books that begin with the same sound.
Play a letter sound matching game with our ABC Twiggles Letter Flash Cards.
Preschool Activities:
Preschool Activities:
Read books that have words that begin witht the same letter and sound as your child's name (example: Angry Ally Alligator (Short A)).
Recognizes and can say words that repeat the same sounds (example: apple, ant, alligator).
How to help:
Say tongue twisters together:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Show children the poster of the ABC Twiggles letter tongue twister. Look at the poster together and discuss the picture. Read and then say the tongue twister together. (Overemphasize the first sound in the word to help your child hear the sound.) Ask children to identify and point to the target letter. Let them circle the target letter on the tongue twister worksheet and add a simple drawing to the page.
Preschool Activities:
Letter Recognition
Recognizes and names letters in his or her own name.
Recognizes and names as many as 10 letters.
Identifies the sounds of a few letters.
How to help:
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Print children's names and let them create colorful labels. Use paint, glue, glitter, etc., to decorate the labels and then place them in their room, on their hooks, etc.
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Point out and name the individual letters in their name. Describe a letter and let children guess the name of the letter.
- Let children find the target letters with ABC Twiggles Letters Puzzle Worksheets.
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Read books to your child that focus on the letters of your child's name with only a few words in large print on a page. Point out letters that are the same as the letters in your child’s name. Choose any of our Alphabet Story Books and let your child play the game to find all target lowercase and uppercase letters in the text (example: Wacky Week Twiggle Book).
Let children form, explore, and learn the shape of the letters. Find a list of ideas here.
Preschool Activities:
Letter Exploration Mats
Play games for your child to find and recognize letters. Hide wooden or plastic letters around the house and let your child find them. Let him or her circle or cut out the target letters in the newspaper and in magazines.
Print and Book Awareness
Print Knowledge. (Your child can follow words left to right and top to bottom.)
How to help:
When reading a book ask questions like, "What should we do first if we want to read the book?" "What is the title of the story?" "Where should we start reading?" "Help me turn the page." "Can you help me find the picture of __________?"
Can memorize or participate in reading books.
Listens to a story read aloud, participate, and begins to ask and answer questions about the text, based on the pictures.
Pretends to read a book by using some of the language from the text and describes what is happening on the page.
Retells the events of a story and can place pictures in order, with or without prompts from an adult.
How to help:
Read the Twiggle Book Cookie Maker, Cookie Baker together. Let your child read the book to you and retell the story. Last, let your child play the Twiggle Book's game to place the story events pictures in order.
Writing
Write some letters correctly.
How to help:
Help your child learn to write her name and practice writing letters. Use our fun letter pre-writing worksheets to practice writing letter shapes.
Preschool Activities: 
Preschool Activities:
Let children use their index finger to write their name in shaving cream, in salt, or with finger paint.
Forms letters and shows increasing knowledge of letters and sounds.
With just a few fun learning activities during summer, you will help your child get off to a great start!
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