• Isolating phonemes – Student can identify the individual sounds of letters.  Example: Teacher says, “What is the first sound in man?” or “What sound do you hear at the end of man?”  Student answers, “/m/” or “/n/” accordingly.
• Matching phonemes – Student identifies the words with the same beginning sound in a short list of words.   Example: Teacher says, “Listen to these words and tell me which ones begin with the same sound: ball, bell, cat, book.”  Student answers, “ball, bell, book.”
• Blending phonemes – Student listens to individual sounds and blends them together to form a word.  Example:  Teacher says, “Listen to these sounds and tell me the word, /m/-/a-/-/n/.”  Student answers, “Man.”
• Segmenting phonemes – Student hears a word and makes the individual sounds for that word.  Example:  Teacher says, “Tell me the sounds you hear in man.”  Student answers, “/m/-/a/-/n/.”
• Deleting phonemes – Teacher removes the beginning phoneme and student tells the new word.  Example:  Teacher says, “Listen to ‘grow,’ then take away the /g/ sound at the beginning.  What is the new word?”  Student answers, “Row.”
• Adding phonemes – Teacher adds a phoneme to a word.  Example:  Teacher says, ” Listen to ‘row.’   Now add /g/ to the beginning of row.  What is the new word?”  Student answers, “Grow.”

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It’s amazing to me that our grandson, who is two years and two months old, knows how to play games on an iPhone.   Technology is amazing and such a wonderful tool for learning!.

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I highly recommend the TV Program called “World World.”  Our grandson just turned two years old, and he knows his alphabet and is making sounds of the letters on his own.  He has watched World Word for the past year, and for a long time that was the only thing on TV that kept his attention.  He loved it!  And he was absorbing reading skills effortlessly.  (By the way, our daughter and s-i-l did not let him watch much TV, especially when younger.  Word World was the only show he watched.)

ABOVE, you will notice our grandson’s World World toys that you can buy at Target and other places.  These toys reinforce the skills learned on the program.

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• Hopefully, the child will have been read to on a several-times-a-week basis starting during their baby years.  If not, parents should begin now reading to their child every day.
• Help develop a love for reading in the child.  Make story time special and in a special place.  It should be fun, with books that interest the child.
• Visit the library every week during children’s story time.  While at the library, let the child choose a couple of books to check out and take home.
• Play alphabet games with the child.
• Play games of what happened  “first, next and last.”  (Ex:  First, you brush your teeth.  Next, you put on your pajamas.  Last, you go to bed.)  You can do this with any activity the child does.
• Have the child watch “Word World” on TV.  It teaches alphabet letters and words in a cute, colorful format.  Our grandson absolutely loves that program and started watching it when he was a baby.  He’s 19 months old now, and it is the only show that will keep his attention the entire time.  He already knows most of his uppercase letters.  If you’ve never watched Word World, I highly recommend it.  It’s one of the best children’s shows on television.

When reading a book to the child:

(You will have to adjust the questions according to the age of the child.)

• Talk about the picture on each page first before reading the page.
• Run your finger under words as you read them.
• Play a guessing game of “What do you think will happen next?” as you are reading the story to the child.
• Ask, “Why do you think this happened?” when appropriate.  Accept their answer as valid and never put down a child’s answer.  If they don’t know why, suggest a possibility.
• Share what you like and what you don’t like about a story.
• Ask child what they liked and what they didn’t like about the story.
• Talk about what happened first, next, and last.
• Talk about what the story is mainly about.
• Have child draw pictures about the story.

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This is a great “big book” (or “board book” as some may call them) that is made by Funfax.  It’s great for teaching different levels:

• Young children – just talk about the basics
• ESL students – pictures and visuals are great for teaching them
• Gifted students – deeper material in the book can be used with them and higher level questions can be presented
• Science lesson – pick and choose the material in the book you need for your lesson

I’ve had my book for a while, but they are still available through Amazon.

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When teaching children about shapes, they need to do various activities to learn the differences between the shapes.  Some students may need much repetition, and some may learn them quickly.  Adjust the activities according to the student.  Here are some activities:

• Compare the shapes to objects: “A circle is round like a ball.”  “A square is like a window (square shaped).”  “A rectangle is like a door.”   “A triangle is shaped like pizza or an ice cream cone.”
• Have actual shapes for the student to feel. For teaching about a circle, you could use lids, tops to bottles, a ball, a plastic cup (the top and bottom), and any objects you see that have a circle in them.  In the picture below, you will even see a round, Spider-Man wipe-off board.   For teaching about a square, you could use a square box, a square book, a square cake pan, etc.  Count the four sides on all the squares.  For teaching about a rectangle, you could use a rectangular shaped box or book, an oblong cake pan, a Kleenex box, a notebook, etc.  Count the four sides on all the rectangles, two longs sides and two short sides.  For teaching about a triangle, you could use an ice cream cone, a piece of pizza (or a picture of one slice of pizza), a party hat, etc.  Count the three sides on all the triangles.
• Use simple workbooks like the ones pictured above that have stickers and/or activities.  Count the sides on the squares, rectangles, and triangles when working with them.
• Having students trace the shapes is an excellent activity.
• Have students cut out the shapes. You can draw large shapes for the students to cut out first and then later progress to smaller and smaller shapes.

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• An Orange for a Bellybutton by Haruo Fukami
• An Orange in January by Dianna Hutts Aston
• Autumn Orange by Christianne C. Jones
• Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman
• Each Orange Has 8 Slices by Paul Giganti  (Reprint)
• Mystery of the Flying Orange Pumpkin by Steven Kellogg
• Orange by Nancy Harris
• Orange Juice by Betsey Chessen and Pamela Chanko
  
• Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
• Orange:  Seeing Orange All Around Us by Sarah L. Schuette and Elena Bodrova
  
• Oranges by Inez Snyder
• Oranges to Orange Juice ( How Things Are Made) by Inez Snyder
  
• Otto’s Orange Day by Frank Cammuso Jay Lynch
• Star in My Orange: Looking for Nature’s Shapes by Dana Meachen Rau
  
• The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
• What Columbus Found:  It Was Orange, It Was Round by Jane Kurtz
  
• Why is an Orange Called an Orange? by Cobi Ladner

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One student I worked with knew how to count to ten, but one of the skills we had to work on a lot was how to count objects up to ten.  He would often get mixed up after counting five objects, would start counting too fast and miss some objects, or  he would start moving backwards and recount objects he had already counted.  It took a lot of repetition for him to learn to do this, and so we did various activities.  These are some of the activities we did:

• Have student put 10 Teddy Grahams or Fish Crackers in a row.  Have student count slowly, touching each cookie or cracker as they count it.  Count with the student a couple of times if necessary. If successful, they get to eat one cookie.  Then count the 9 remaining cookies.  If successful, they get to eat one more cookie.  Repeat until all cookies have been eaten.
• Use simple number workbooks.  I was able to find two sticker and activity workbooks for this student that he enjoyed. Some pages involved stickers and some involved coloring.
• Line up various objects to count such as blocks, pennies, game pieces, etc.  Count how many there are and make a game out of it, such as put six blocks in the bucket, nine pennies in the piggy bank, etc.

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Simple Book:  I WANT TO TRAVEL

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PART ONE – BRAINSTORMING FROM WHAT IS VISIBLE:

The first step in teaching children how to brainstorm is for the teacher to model brainstorming, show them how you yourself brainstorm.  Take something they can see such as one of their classmates.   Think out loud and write on the board everything about that student.  For example:

• Her name is Sally.
• She’s in first grade.
• She has blonde hair.
• She has long hair.
• She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
• She wears glasses.
• She has a big smile.
• She has a picture of a dog on her T-shirt.

Another example would be to take a book, preferably a big book so all students can see easily.   If I had the book about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, then this is what I would write on the board from what we could see in the picture on the front of the book:

• There are three bears.
• One bear is really big.
• One bear is little.
• One bear is in-between size.
• The bears are brown.
• There is a girl.
• She is little.
• She has blonde hair.
• She is wearing a dress.
• Here dress is blue and red.
• There is a house.
• It has a door and two windows.
• There are lots and lots of trees (a forest).
• There are flowers beside the house.

After you have modeled for the students, then brainstorm together with the students.  After that,  have the students practice brainstorming with a partner, then by themselves.  We will proceed in Part Two to brainstorming ideas.

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