Rising 1st Grade Summer Learning

This summer, perhaps more than any other, our children need time to decompress.

We hope your child gets to spend a lot of time outdoors, explore lots of adventures, swim, go on picnics, and enjoy nature hikes.

We hope your child gets to do house chores and help out with day to day activities (washing dishes, sweeping the floor, tidying up, setting the table). We hope your child gets to cook and enjoy helping prepare simple recipes, making lemonade, smoothies, squeezing oranges for juice, using the juice maker to taste fresh apple juice.

We hope you enjoy lots of downtime and field trips and walks and hikes and bike rides with your child. We hope you have time to talk and walk and laugh together.

Reading

For about 30 minutes each day, we hope your child engages in any of the following:

Continue to read on a regular basis. Read physical books if you have them. Read ebooks and with online apps such as: RAZ kids; Starfall Reading (See resource link below)
Continue to be read to (books with a higher vocabulary and up to their listening level which is higher than their reading level). Audio books are also great for this.

Visit your public library! Virtually or in person – resource links below

Writing

Keep a journal and continue to write books over the summer:

Practice writing their full name
Practice writing lowercase letters
Write about something they have done
Make up stories and write books
Write a how-to book, teaching someone how to do something
Write posters to help change the world!
For Summer Writing Bingo click HERE

Mathematics

Board games, card games, and dice games
Write numbers using correct numeral formation without reversals
Solve addition and subtraction word problems when walking or driving around.
For Summer 2020 Math Calendar click HERE.

Religion

Keep your child connected to and aware of God’s love. Click HERE for faith formation aids.

Recommended books:

Read-Aloud Bible Stories Volume 1 by Ella K. Lindvall and H. Kent Puckett
Psalms for Young Children by Marie-Helene Delval
Book of Saints by Amy Welborn

Suggestions for Skills related Summer Fun

Activities to improve fine motor skills:

Provide lots of opportunities for drawing and manipulating different materials:
Use sidewalk chalk, markers, crayons, pencils, pens, etc.
Use whiteboards (they love them!)
Trace letters they see with index fingers, paint, or other materials
Play with small Lego’s
Play with thick clay that really needs muscles digging
Count small items (beads, beans, raisins)
Use tweezers, pincers, ice tongs to grab items.
Provide multiple invitations for drawing and painting at easel
Allow them to shop for interesting and enticing journals and notebooks of all sizes and designs (they love the small pocket ones)
Take them on investigation outings where they record in their notebooks what they observe
Provide maze books and dot to dot books
Provide opportunities for cutting and gluing

Activities to increase knowledge of letters of the alphabet names:

Read lots of ABC books together
Have letter puzzles available
Have magnetic letters available on fridge and on cookie sheets
Have a poster with the letters hanging low at child’s eye level
Use Starfall program on iPad or computer
Make sensory letters out of clay or play dough or other fun sensory items. Have your child collect the 26 letters of the alphabet.
Decorate letters with sugar, sand, salt.
Go on a letter hunt around your house or in magazine
Cut up the letters from a magazine, from A-Z.
Write letters on a tray with sand, shaving lotion, finger paint.
Make necklaces with letter beads for each member of the family.
Have an alphabet place mat for them to look at while eating.
Make alphabet soup, or play with alphabet soup.

Activities to increase knowledge of letter sounds:

Play I Spy games with initial letter sounds (I spy something that begins with the sound bbb)
Stretch words and stutter together in order to highlight sounds
Pick one letter, and go around the house trying to find items that begin with that sound.
Use the alphabet chart with pictures to cue for sounds.
Use Starfall program
Read a lot of familiar mother goose rhymes until they associate letter with sound: listen to lots of nursery rhyme songs
See these YouTube songs on this google slide: Sound Games Google Slides Summer 2020

For All:

TONS of time to play
Tons of time outdoors when possible safely
Unstructured playground time is best for their growing muscles (if playgrounds are open)
And read to them as much as possible!
Listen to audio books (with no visuals)
Play lots of board games
Give them a lot of experience visual counting one die, then 2 dice
Count count count for fun and for practical reasons
Climbing, running, skipping, hopping, freeze dance, biking, scootering, and hopscotch
Give them chances to wait
Give them the chance to be bored
Expect them to say please and thank you
No need for ALL their dreams to come true