Learning to Read – Preschool November 20, 2009

There are so many ways that preschoolers can get a head start on enjoying learning to read. I just read about how the homeschoolers curriculums work.  And I saw some great free learning games for preschool students.

The cadillac of preschool online learning that I’ve seen was just launched by a company called Time4Learning.com. And I quote:

When they’re logged in to Time4Learning, preschoolers won’t just sit and watch; they’ll laugh, learn, participate and explore. They’ll sing along with Ed Mouse on the farm and get up and exercise with a group of kids. They’ll yell out numbers to an octopus under the sea and politely help a mountain climber scale Manners Mountain. Children can label their virtual school supplies box and library card with their own name and plan their week with a customizable weekly planner. You’ll see smiles and hear giggles that let you know that your children are having fun and when they start talking about habitats and tertiary colors, you’ll know it’s more than just fun.

Preschool Activities November 19, 2009

We all love to watch our preschoolers develop new skills and independence. What  a thrill when I see a preschooler learning on the computer:

The Time4Learning preschool program combines technology, animated characters, original stories and fun music to inspire a love of learning in the littlest e-learners. Ed Mouse and his friends guide children through more than forty topics such as numbers, letters, rhymes, self, time, music and colors.

It follows the important standard groups such as:
NYAEC
State standards
Headstart

First Preschool Theme: School Supplies October 27, 2009

The first preschool them in Time4Learning’s Preschool On Line Curriculum: School Supplies

Story: “Big Enough,” written by Kelly Stone; illustrated by Kelly Kauffman.

Vocabulary: school supplies, backpack, box, circle, clay, colors, computer, crayons, cut, glue, glue stick, lessons, markers, mess, organize, paint, paper, pencil, scissors, special, storage place, story book, tools.

Stories You Write: Allows the child to create his/her own story, by choosing from various possibilities of pictures with linked audio descriptions. Reinforces the idea of a logical story,as well as, the vocabulary from this theme.

Find It: Asks the child to identify various school supplies. This helps to reinforce the vocabulary from this theme.

Puzzle: Reinforces vocabulary as child clicks and drags each school supply to its specially shaped opening.

Online preschool games October 25, 2009

Online Preschool Learning Games and Educational Activities

Online preschool games from Time4Learning are a great answer to the parents’ search for a safe and easy-to-use preschool curriculum.

Our online learning games are designed to enhance learning with age appropriate preschool curriculum delivered via multimedia lessons. Time4Learning provides preschool learning games in a system that guides the children from one activity to the next, keeping track of their progress.

Time4Learning is an easy-to-use online preschool curriculum for young learners, featuring animated activities with fun characters and sound effects. The characters in the learning games guide children through the steps of the learning activities, making it simple for pre-readers to follow and enjoy.  There’s also info on preschool activities online at Todays Learners and I’m hoping to get involved with the Parenting Bible project to add some preschool info.

A Learning Tool for Early Childhood Development October 21, 2009

The activities are interactive and engaging, with simple verbal directions. The interactions (verbal instructions, interface buttons, graphics, and format) are designed for pre-readers with an early learning level of attention, of fine muscle control, and of vocabulary. It is designed so that, after the first session, a child could use the program on his or her own with minimal adult supervision (as required for any child on the internet).

Time4Learnings Preschool Program October 18, 2009

Time4Learnings Preschool Curriculum is a developmentally appropriate curriculum for early learning. Time4Learning believes that the best learning methods for this age group are play-based and experiential. The activities build skills in a variety of areas notably: pre-reading literacy, math foundation, creative expression, music, art, and science. The lessons are interactive and engaging, with simple verbal directions, appealing graphics and some great music. The program is organized around themes (such as colors, shapes, tools, or foods) which are introduced with a story or song followed by activities tied to the theme. This summarizes the sequence of Time4Learning’s Preschool program, defines the skill set required for use, and reviews what the program covers and does not cover.

Dolch Words August 29, 2009

I’ve been trying to understand the collections of different words and what different ways we should learn them.

Dolch Words - The Dolch Word List is a list compiled by Edward William Dolch in 1936. The list contains 220 commonly used words that should be recognized by “sight” for fast or “fluent” reading. The compilation excludes nouns, which comprise a separate 95-word list.
High Frequency Words
Fry Words
Sight Words

Definitions:
Speaking Vocabulary
Writing Vocabulary
Verbal Comprehension Vocabulary
Reading Comprehension Vocabulary

Time4Learning’s new preschool activities online August 9, 2009

I’ve really been enjoying the updated Time4Learning preschool program online.  Here’s a quick description.

Online preschool games from Time4Learning are a great answer to the parents’ search for a safe and easy-to-use preschool curriculum.

Our online learning games are designed to enhance learning with age appropriate preschool curriculum delivered via multimedia lessons. Time4Learning provides preschool learning games in a system that guides the children from one activity to the next, keeping track of their progress.

Time4Learning is an easy-to-use online preschool curriculum for young learners, featuring animated activities with fun characters and sound effects. The characters in the learning games guide children through the steps of the learning activities, making it simple for pre-readers to follow and enjoy.

Wondering how extensive their curriculum is?
Take a look at our Preschool Curriculum and see!

Here’s a description of three of the  forty themes…

School Supplies

Story: “Big Enough,” written by Kelly Stone; illustrated by Kelly Kauffman.

Vocabulary: school supplies, backpack, box, circle, clay, colors, computer, crayons, cut, glue, glue stick, lessons, markers, mess, organize, paint, paper, pencil, scissors, special, storage place, story book, tools.

Stories You Write: Allows the child to create his/her own story, by choosing from various possibilities of pictures with linked audio descriptions. Reinforces the idea of a logical story,as well as, the vocabulary from this theme.

Find It: Asks the child to identify various school supplies. This helps to reinforce the vocabulary from this theme.

Puzzle: Reinforces vocabulary as child clicks and drags each school supply to its specially shaped opening.

Alphabet

Show Time: “ABC’s”. This introductory activity introduces each capital letter of the alphabet. An interactive activity follows which allows the child to click on a letter in the alphabet, and hear a word that starts with that letter. Each word has a corresponding picture.

Memory Match: This game uses the capital letters S-Z and matches them to a corresponding word on the other side.

Match It: This game reinforces letter recognition. The child must concentrate to find the matching pairs from letters I-R. Which: This activity reinforces letter recognition, as the child must click on the correct letters A-H.

Shapes

Introductory Show: “I See Shapes”. Child sees two scenes. In each scene, the narrator identifies several shapes. The third scene is an interactive classroom where the child is asked to identify objects by their shape.

Vocabulary: circle, diamond, rectangle, square, oval and triangle.

Shapes Puzzle: The child drags a jewel shape into its specially shaped opening. Reinforces shape recognition and shape vocabulary.

Patterns: Shows the child a pair of shapes that form a repeating pattern. A blank space is shown in the pattern, and the child must choose which shape best completes the pattern. The names of each of the shapes are said aloud when they appear onscreen and also when the cursor goes over each of them. Reinforces shape recognition and shape vocabulary.

Match the Shapes: Allows the child to match a common object to its shape. Reinforces vocabulary from this theme.

I found out about it from the Parenting Bible blog which is new and promising.

Online Preschool Curriculum Design July 12, 2009

We’re developing an online interactice preschool curriculum. Questions that we need to deal with:

What to cover? What set of standards or benchmarks should our preschool curriculum attempt to cover? Also, since a preschool curriculum cannot possibly be covered 100% online (consider socialization and most of phys ed), what subset is realistic to attempt to do online?

Should the activities gradually get more challenging? Should we have two halves: easy and hard. Maybe split it into four quarters each one at a slighly different level?

We’re doing an integrated curriculum. What balance of preschool literacy, verbal skills, math skills, emotional skills (recognizing emotions, understanding what emotion a situation might create such as when the ice cream falls off the ice cream cone onto the ground), music, and art?

Creating the curriculum is as much fun as anything:  :- >

I was just reading some interesting posts on homeschool curriculum and homeschool software.

Reading & verbal comprehension July 8, 2009

I’m working on some learning activities and struggling to define what’s appropriate to teach to preschoolers.  One on hand, it’s clear they’re prereaders so the vocabulary that we are helping them build is about their verbal comprehension. We’re building the vocabulary that they understand. 

We also have them interact with the activities so in a sense, we are building a type of vocabulary that they deal with. It’s not just vocabulary that they comprehend but it’s also not words that they are using in written or verbal form either.  Does a category for this exist?

I’ve been looking at some reading skills books at the K-2nd grade level.  I find that there are more specific reading levels within this area such as the the A-M system created for the Fountas and Pinnell scales for the  Guided Reading levels and the 1-28 scale of the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) level. 

Should we be teaching preschoolers as much of the K-2 skills as we can or should we let them stay in the PreK skills area?

I’m also curious about how reading comprehension skills relates to verbal comprehension skills?