Well hey there, I'm Robin Wilson and welcome
to the Education Connection where we help parents
and teachers set young learners up for success.
If you're a parent, a teacher, or homeschooler
wondering how to get your child ready for first
grade, you're in the right place. So last week
I covered kindergarten academics. So if you want
to back it up, about a month ago I kind of did
an overview of all of them and all of the things
and I just barely touched on some of the things
that you'll need. But last week I did a deep
dive into the academics of kindergarten and tonight
I'm going to do a deep dive into first grade
academics. Hey this episode though, let's let's
talk about this for a minute before I get started
It's extra special to me because it marks 30th
of my 30th podcast So did you know that most
podcasts don't make it past 10 episodes and among
the ones that do only a small percentage reach
30 episodes and beyond. I'm so grateful for your
support and for being on this journey with me
and together we're making an impact on young
learners everywhere. But before we jump in, I
also want to remind you that I have worked on
a Bible curriculum. It has 13 lessons and it's
available to support your child's faith based
learning journey. You can find more details in
this show notes. Right now it is available on
my teachers pay teachers store and I do share
that link in the show notes. I am working on
getting that turned into a book on Amazon. So
I'm in the process in the kind of learning curve
of that right now because I have never done that
before but I do want to make it available for
as many people as possible. So let's talk about
something incredibly important getting your child
academically ready for first grade. I know it
can feel overwhelming but today I'm gonna guide
you through the key reading and math skills they
need and share some simple no prep activities
you can use right away. So there is a let me
share a story It was a first the first day of
first grade and little Emma held tightly to her
mother's hand at the classroom door now as a
first grade teacher I've seen this many many
times She looked around at the bright posters
the books on the shelves and the other kids chatting
excitedly When her teacher handed out the first
activity a simple word game Emma hesitated for
a moment The letters look similar and she wasn't
quite sure where to start. But then she took
a deep breath and remembered the word game she
had played at home. Slowly she sounded out the
letters forming a word. A smile spread across
her face and she realized I can do this. So this
is because you did the hard work at home in preparing
your child for the next year and if you're a
teacher you did the same thing with your students
in your class and I just want to give a little
extra activity to do this evening for some of
the things that you will need to help them know
for next year. So as a parent or teacher, this
is the moment we want for every child. They walk
in, they're a little nervous, they're looking
around but then they start seeing things that
they recognize and they start seeing letters
they recognize and numbers they recognize and
the friendly faces and they start feeling the
confidence to take on new challenges and the
excitement of learning. That's why today we're
focusing on the academic skills that will help
your child thrive in first grade. So if you are
a homeschool mom and you want to also help your
child get ready for the next year's academics
and you want to make sure that they're staying
on task for the year coming up for the things
that we're actually teaching in first grade in
the public school too. I'm just connecting all
of those things together. First grade is a big
transition and without the right skills Children
can struggle to keep up and you might be wondering
does my child know enough? How can I help them
feel confident in reading and math? That's where
I come in I'm here to make it simple and show
you how to build these skills in fun and engaging
ways So we are going to master rate reading readiness
And reading success comes from five key areas.
Phonics, phonemic awareness, and that is recognizing
letter sounds and manipulating the sounds within
words. Number two, fluency. That's reading smoothly
and accurately. I know when they're leaving kindergarten
they may not be reading big books fluently but
if they can read the CVC words fluently cat dog
hug those three letter words that are CVC and
I'll break that down CVC means consonant vowel
consonant so for example the word dog D is a
consonant the O is a vowel and the G is a consonant.
So when we say they can read the CVC words pretty
well, that is very helpful for going into first
grade. Comprehension, understanding what's being
read, and that is including a listening comprehension.
So if you read to your child and they're able
to discuss it and hear what you're saying and
they're able to talk about What they understand
and what they don't understand That is what the
comprehension is. So it doesn't they don't have
to be reading to comprehend So vocabulary expanding
word knowledge for better understanding So I'm
gonna go through each one of these and I'm gonna
break it down into smaller steps and some activities
that you can do for each of these so for phonics
and phonemic awareness We're going to play a
game called try the say it change it game so
we're going to start with a simple word like
cat c -a -t so you're going to ask your child
what if we change the c sound to b what word
do we have now the answer would be bat. Now you
can do this as simply as a marker on a paper
and you can write C -A -T and then ask them what
if we change that C to a B and then just rewrite
the word underneath. If you do go to the Dollar
Tree or something like that you could pick up
some magnetic letters But if you don't have that
and you have some three by five index cards You
can just cut those into like maybe a third and
just write them write all the alphabet on them
And you can use those for letters that keeps
you from having to spend any extra money For
fluency try echo reading so read a short sentence
aloud and have your child repeat it Mimicking
your expression and speed This builds confidence
and improves reading fluency. So if you're reading
a book to your child, just have them read a few
words with you and you read it first and they
can repeat after. If you have some small readers
or some simpler books, you can do this with the
books that they are reading. For comprehension
you can ask the W questions and so the W questions
are who what when why and where So after you
read after you read a book or even just the page
of a book So I wouldn't You could do this with
any book. You can do this with chapter books,
but I'm thinking of the smaller books, the picture
books that you get from the library. So if you
read a page together like you're reading to them
at night, and you just stop after that page and
ask, who's in the story? What happened there?
What just took place? This will strengthen understanding
and improve their memory, their work, their recall.
something else you can do for vocabulary is you
can play Word of the Day. So introduce a new
word and use it in a different sentence throughout
the day. So ask your child to use it in their
own sentence to build word knowledge. So you
could come up with the word lawn because lawn
you know a lot of times will say go in the front
yard. but maybe they don't hear it called the
lawn and so you could make lawn the word of the
day and then just have them use you make a sentence
and then have them make up a sentence and then
try to see how many times you can use that word
during the day so that's fun all right so now
we're going to talk about math so we're going
to switch gears to math readiness And there's
a lot of things that we need to know in math
and reading, but just to keep it within our 15
-20 minute time frame, I'm going to hit on a
few of the most important in both reading and
math. So in math, it's very important that we
build these three foundational skills. So there's,
like I said, there's lots of things that we learn,
but here's some three very basic foundational
skills that will help your child be ready. to
build on their knowledge going into first grade.
The first one is number sense. So just getting
a sense of numbers, recognizing numbers is the
first thing. So just pointing to letter sorry
to numbers and being able to recognize a two
or that's a five. Writing them and being able
to write them the correct way. I have children
writing twos over the years that I've taught.
They'll write a 2 and it looks like a backwards
5 And they say that's a 2 like they're really
believing that that is a 2 or they'll put a Z
as a 2 So just practice those numbers and being
able to write them. So that's recognizing numbers.
So if you call it a number They can write it
It's also fun to have them call out a number
and you write it so you can play it the other
way around too have them count forward to ten
and backward and understanding place values so
understanding ones and tens so if you have a
two -digit number knowing that that first digit
to the right is is their ones place and the next
digit right to the left if it's a two -digit
number is your tens place Number two for math
readiness is addition and subtraction so practice
simple addition and subtraction within 10 and
20 So start with 10 once you get that down, then
you can move on to 20 patterns and sequences
Identifying and completing patterns to strengthen
logical thinking so patterns and numbers is a
real good one counting by twos two four six eight
ten and then you can do one three five seven
nine. Also just recognizing that we're counting
by ones it's one two three four and then know
how to count that way one two three four but
knowing that that is counting by ones and if
we're counting two four six eight knowing that
that is counting by twos then 5 10 15 20 is by
fives and then 10 20 30 40 is by tens now let
me back up a little bit counting by twos is probably
one of the harder ones so actually if you want
to I'm gonna back up a little bit on that so
if you want to do ones counting by ones is the
most important that they can count to 20 or even
to a hundred we go to a hundred twenty by the
end of first grade but just going into first
grade you could you know stop at 20 or 30 but
understanding by counting by fives 5 10 15 20
so a fun thing you can do with that one is get
the jump ropes out and start counting by fives
and see how high you can go also with tens 10
20 30 40 50 and just going on up doing that So
here's some quick win activities number sense
counting on Say a number five and see if your
child can go from there and count on From there
after you've gotten one through ten down Then
what if you we just start at five what comes
after that this reinforces number order and place
value addition and subtraction Play make ten
so you can call out a number and have your child
say the number that makes 10 so the answer would
be 4 so for making 10 and I call out a 2 they
will know that they need to call out 8 to finish
the to make it 10 and I've already gone over
this one patterns and sequences counting by 2
so say a number pattern 2 4 6 8 10 you could
also find the missing number so if I say 2 4
8, 10, which number did I leave out? So that's
fun. And you can make it harder by skipping numbers
or counting backward. So the confidence to thrive
in first grade by practicing these skills your
child will gain the confidence they need to succeed
in first grade. Imagine them walking into the
classroom excited and ready to learn because
you've given them the tools they need. And hey,
listen, if you didn't get all of these things
by the time they start first grade, even if you
get part of these things, you are on a good path
to be ready to go. So this episode has helped
you. Please take a moment to give me a five star
review. Your support helps other parents and
teachers find this podcast and prepare their
little learners for success. Thanks for listening
and see you next time!