Suggested Ways to Help Your First Grade Child at Home:

Follow and extend the learning concepts from the first grade curriculum at home.  Each time a new concept is taught at school, follow up with a little more practice and/or extensions of that concept at home.  Occasional reviews are important for long term retention too.

Go over your child’s corrected class work with them.  Review the concept that was taught.  Help them to correct any mistakes, and then practice those skills with them a few more times at home.

Apply learning concepts to real life situations.  Children learn best in real life practical applications, so involve them in these kinds of experiences whenever you can.

Reading

Foster a love of reading!

• Let them see you reading for enjoyment.
• Surround your child with literature and all kinds of print media!
• Read to them, read together, let them “read” to you!
• Get your child his/her own library card and go to the library regularly.
• Subscribe to children’s magazines.
• Participate in Book Orders and Book Fairs.
• Remember, books make great gifts and rewards!

Support their reading skills at home!

• Read aloud for 15 minutes to your child daily.  Track under each word with your finger.  Model expression and fluency.  Make it fun!
• Practice & review all of the letter sounds until they are mastered.  Review the long and short vowel sounds frequently.
• Practice their “Reading Words and Sentences” daily.  They should be mastered fluently and effortlessly by Friday.
• Practice the entire word ring once a week to review all of their sight words.
• Help your child use their skills in sounding out (“sound and pound”) new decodable words as they’re reading.
• Go over your child’s corrected phonics & reading skill pages with them.

Help them to correct any mistakes, and then practice those skills with them a few more times.

• Have them practice reading stories with fluency and expression.
• Ask comprehension questions occasionally from the stories you read.  Then have them show you where they found the answers on the page.

Writing:

• Write creatively for fun, and for real life applications.  Have them go for the content first.  Then go back and work on spelling, capitalization, punctuation and printing.
• Write complete sentences with correct spacing, capitalization, and punctuation.
• Write in the “At Home Journal” using the monthly topic list.
• Practice printing.  Work on correct formation, uniformity, size, and neatness.
• Spelling:  Sound out (“finger spell”) decodable words.  Remind them to stretch out the work like a rubber band, and listen to the sounds.  Show them the correct way to write the word after they’ve given it a try on their own, and have them write it correctly.
• Computer keyboarding skills:  Practice correct finger placement on the home keys, use the letter and number keys, use the shift key and the space bar.

Math:

• Follow the suggested activities that come home in each math unit’s “Family Letters”.
• Go over your child’s corrected class work with them.  Help them to correct any mistakes, and then practice those skills with them a few more times during the week.
• Practice counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.
• Practice “counting on” from the middle of the number line.
• Review and apply the math concepts of addition, subtraction, time, counting money, and measurement, frequently in real life situations at home.
• Make flashcards and study daily for Tuesday and Thursday “Math Facts” addition and subtraction mastery tests.

Optional “extra credit” activities:  will be coming home at the beginning of each month.