• General Reading and Writing Improvement Strategies:

    • Read to your child
    • Model good habits by reading in front of your child
    • Visit the public library frequently
    • Download reading apps for builidng skills in phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension
    • Limit TV or video games
    • Provide activities that relate reading to daily life:  have your child write the menu for dinner, have your child locate letters and words on food containers, have your child help write a shopping list and have them check off items as you shop, when traveling write words in a grid and have your child color in the grid as they see the words on signs

    Vocabulary Development:

    • Notice street and store signs together and talk about what they say and mean
    • Build vocabulary by talking to your child regularly.  Talk about the people you see and the types of jobs they have.  Talk about the colors and shapes of things you see.  Sing songs you both know.  Ask your child specific things about their day.
    • Play word games (such as Scattergories) to help develo word choice and categorizing skills
    • Read a challenging book aloud to your child and give exposure to higher level words
    • Label objects around the house with sticky notes
    • Describe objects using a simile or metaphor (e.g., the car is rad as an apple, or the clouds are like cotton balls)

    Word Study:

    • Play word games.  Practice word play with your child by saying words and having them say a rhyming word.
    • Practice synonyms and antonyms by saying a word and having your child say a word that means the same or the opposite.
    • Play games such as, "I'm thinking of a word.  Who can guess a letter in it?"
    • Say one letter of the alphabet and have your child name the next three letters in order.
    • Say a letter and have your child name the letter that comes just before that letter.
    • Locate pictures in magazines and practice identifying the beginning and ending sounds of each picture.
    • Play word games such as Hangman or Scrabble.
    • Circle words in a newspaper or magazine that start with the same letter or are in the same word family (e.g., words ending with -ing or -unk)
    • Color the consonants blue and vowels red in words.

    Reading Comprehension:

    • Read a story or have your child read.  
      • Have your child pick their favorite part
      • Ask your child to think of alternative solutions to the problem
      • Have your child predict what will happen next
      • Ask your child to change the ending
      • Ask literal questions about the facts
      • Ask inferential questions about what they think it means
      • Ask critical questions about how they might use the information like:  Why did the author choose to use this particular word?  How could the author have explained this better?
      • Compare and contrast movies with books
      • Read newspaper articles with your child and discuss events in the news
      • Have your child tell the beginning to end of a story in the correct order and use details
      • When reading together, ask the child "wh" questions (Who? What? Where? When? Why?) to see if they are comprehending

    Writing:

    • Encourage your child to keep a journal
    • Encourage letter writing, pen pals, thank you notes
    • Have your child write a declarative statement, interrogative question, and exclamatory sentence about a picture in a magazine.  An example would be:  There is a barn on the farm.  What animals live in the barn?  There are baby chickens hatching in the barn!

    Activities for Improving Reading and Writing Skills:

    • Read silently _____ minutes each day.
    • Study spelling words every night.
    • Write words that rhyme with your spelling words.
    • Ask questions when you don't understand
    • Be responsible for taking homework home
    • Read a variety of fiction and non-fiction 

    General Mathematics Improvement Strategies:

    • Provide activiites that enrich and relate mathematics to daily life.
      • Talk about how many bowls to put out for dinner
      • Have your child count similar items as you put away groceries
      • Have your child help measure ingredients for recipes
      • Give your child change to count out in order to pay for small purchases at the store; have older children calculate change
      • Ask your child to compare prices of items by asking things like, "Which can of beans costs more?"
      • Read the days and dates on a calendar, talk about the number of days in the month, the number of days remaining until a special event, etc. 
      • Play games involving math (e.g., roll dice and add, subtract or multiply the numbers; roll die and lay out the number of pennies as dots shown, when someone gets five pennies, they can trade it for a nickel, dime and so forth until they get to a dollar; play War and decide whose card has the highest value

     Computation:

    • Count orally by twos, fives, or tens
    • Complete connect-the-dot pictures
    • Count and pair objects found around the house, and determine whether there's an odd or even number of items
    • Review math facts at home, in the car, waiting in line, or duirng other downtime
    • Provide your child with verbal mathematics problems.  "Take the number five; add six; multiply by three; subtract three; divide by five.  What's your answer?"
    • Encourage your child to read nutrition lables.  Have them calculate the percent of fat in each item.

    Geometry:

    • Look around the house for different geometric shapes, such as triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles
    • Help your child recognize and identify real-world examples of right angles (the corner of a book) and parallel lines (railroad tracks)
    • While driving together, direct your child to look for objects with the same size and shape

    Measurement:

    • Arrange various objects (books, boxes, and cans) by various size and measurement (length, weight, and volume) attributes.  Talk with your child about how they are arranged using comparison words like taller, shorter, narrower, wider, heaviest, lightest, more, less, about, and same
    • Use a standard measuring tool (a ruler, a tape measure, or a yardstick) to measure objects located in the house
    • Review equivalent names for measurements.  For example, "How many cups in a pint?"
    • Encourage your child to incorporate such terms as whole, halves, thirds, and fourths into his or her everyday life

    Statistics, Probability, Graphing:

    • Open a pack of Skittles or M&M's and make a bar graph showing the number of each color found inside the pack
    • Find the coordinates of places on a state map
    • Watch the news for a week, write down the temperatures for each day, then graph the weather temperatures for the week
    • Track the scores of ball games played by your favorite team, then graph these scores over a period of several weeks

    Problem Solving:

    • Encourage your child to figure out answers to real-life situations:  "We have one can of tuna, and we need five.  How many more do we need to buy?"
    • Ask questions that involve equal sharing.  For exmaple, "Seven children share 49 baseball cards.  How many cards does each child get?"
    • Help your child look up the population and land area of the state and city in which you live and compare these facts with those of other states and cities. 

    Alebraic Concepts:

    • Encougrage your child to count and recognize pattern and color in the environment by discussing what they see:
      • What color is the wall in the hallway?
      • What is the numbe on the house across the street?
      • How many objects are left on the table if I take one away?
      • How many swings are on the playground?
    • Have your child look for patterns on buildings, rugs, floors, and clothing

    Acitivities for Improving Mathematics Skills:

    • Play I Spy looking for different shapes
    • Memorize math facts
    • Start a family coin collection jar; keep track of the amount of money that is going into the jar by logging each deposit in a journal