How do Kindergarteners read?

Friday 

• Pajama Day!  The kiddos earned a special day so they may wear pajamas to school.
• "Socktober"When:  Friday, October 24, 2014
  What:  Students should bring a hygiene item (shampoo, soap, diapers, toothpaste, toothbrush, detergent, toilet paper) to school on Friday OR $1.00 and will be able to go "shoe-less" at some point during the day in their classroom.  We're also encouraging students to wear fun, crazy socks.
  *All items and money donated will be given to Peace Lutheran's Necessities For Neighbors program.Student Council will stop by each classroom at the end of the day on Friday to collect items and money.

All Week

• BINGO this week during morning meeting - Mr. D. reads off a few of the books available at the upcoming book fair.  If we get a BINGO, we can win book money for our room.

Today I thought I would spend a little time explaining what is expected for reading in Kindergarten.  If you are like me, in Kindergarten the teacher read to us but we never did anything but look at pictures.  While I do read to the kids, we take reading farther than I did as a child.

In each of our books, we determine who is the author?  Who is the illustrator?  What do each of these people do?  How do the pictures help us figure out what the book is about?

We also talk about punctuation.  A period means stop.  A question mark means someone is asking something.  Quotes mean someone is talking.

We talk about spacing.  How there is a space between every word. All this happens before we even really read the book.

We look for words we must know.  In this room we call them snap words.  These words are simple words like: I, a, the, how, see, like, do, and you.  We should know all of these without having to sound them out or take time thinking about them.

With the harder words, we use letter sounds and split bigger words into chunks or syllables.   Today we looked at the word elephant.  We broke it down into el - e - phant.

If you are reading with your child at home, try some of these techniques and see what your kiddo will know.  They just might surprise you!