Language Arts
Name Writing
Let's start off by focusing on one of our favorite activities - name writing!
Practice writing your child's name! Rainbow writing is a lot of fun. You might start by writing your child's name for them, and then have them trace on top of your writing with as many colors as they can find with crayons, markers, highlighters, pens etc).
Also, try to provide lots of writing opportunities throughout your day or week.
Consider options such as:
- Writing on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalks
- Tape paper to the wall and have your child write or draw you a picture
- Put sand, glitter, sprinkles, hair gel or other fun textures inside a ziplock bag and have your child write the letters of their name using their finger.
Caterpillar Name Craft! Name crafts are one of my new favorite things (besides play dough trays). It’s a fun way to practice scissor skills and name writing because what kid doesn’t absolutely love activities with his/her name? If your students need extra support cutting, have them use these loop scissors that bounce back open. Using supports such as loop scissors, all of your students can do the craft independently (or almost independently).
This is a fun and creative sensory letter writing activity. All you need is shaving cream and letter cards. You can create your own letter cards if you do not have any at home. All you need is paper and a writing utensil.
You can use any letter magnets! Just draw a rainbow on a larger piece of paper and tape it down to a table or taped it to a giant magnet sheet , since sorting magnets.
This freebie from TeachersPayTeachers.com is especially great for our Kindergarten-bound students. Encourage your child to clap the syllables and count out the sounds in their name and other familiar words.
Materials Needed to Make the Rainbow Hop Letter Sounds Game
Construction paper – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple – a couple of sheets of each color
Black marker
Die (dice)
Bowl or some other circle template
Activity Prep:
1. I used a cereal bowl to trace 2 circles on each sheet of paper. They just fit on the paper. I used 2 sheets of paper for each color, so I had 4 circles of each color. This was only 24 letters, so I didn’t have y and z. I could have made 2 more, but we didn’t have enough room without squishing the rainbow together even more than it already was. Next time, I will do this in another location where we have more room and I will add the remaining 2 letters.
2. Put one set of circles in rainbow order and repeat this 3 more times.
3. Write one letter on each circle. I chose to use lowercase letters because Evan needs more practice with them.
4. Lay the circles out on the floor in the shape of a rainbow.
How to play the Rainbow Hop Letter Sounds Game
The child should stand right in front of the letter “a” and toss the die (dice) to find out how many spaces to move. They can walk over each letter or hop like Evan did. Once, they have moved that many spaces, they should name the letter and tell you the sound it makes.
Grab a pack of alphabet flash cards (or make your own using bits of paper). Spread them all over the floor. You can use other things if you do not have a fly swatter such as: spoon, pencil, net....you can get creative.
You can adjust this for all learning levels. Challenge your child by asking them what letter it is, what sound it makes, what starts with that letter.
Put simply, word families are groups of words that share similar spelling patterns. For example, the words {hot, pot, cot} are all part of the {-OT family}. The words {cat, sat, pat} are part of the {-AT family}. Knowing word families helps children with rhyming, spelling, and reading.
Getting Ready
To do this activity, I gathered a few supplies:
1 large piece of white paper for the background. Mine was 22 x 16 inches.
4 pieces of different colored paper to make flowers. I used red, blue, yellow and orange.
1 piece of green paper to make stems.
Scissors.
1 marker.
I cut out 4 flowers and 4 centers from the colorful construction paper. Then I glued one center on each of the flowers like you see above.