Summer for the Kindergartner

Kindergarten is a year of highly visible progress in reading and language arts. The major milestones in kindergarten reading and language arts are:

• Developing an awareness of letters
• Recognizing that letters have specific sounds
• Awareness of the relationship of “letters to words” and “words to sentences”
• Developing a basic vocabulary set by listening to and identifying unknown words in stories
• Recognizing basic sight words in text

The lessons are organized into a series of chapters that introduce and cover:

1. "Print Awareness" - Teaches the alphabet, parts of a book and the fundamental concepts of print.
2. "Active Listening and Sound" - Develops active listening skills while teaching the concepts of rhyme, rhythm, pattern, and syllables .
3. "The Sights and Sounds of m and s" - Uses the nursery rhyme "Mary Had A Little Lamb" to teach the letters “m” and “s” using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
4. "The Sights and Sounds of d and a" - Uses the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" to teach the long and short sounds of the letter “d” using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
5. "The Sights and Sounds of p and "i" - Uses the nursery rhyme "Pease Pudding" to teach the sound of the letter "p" and the short sound of the letter "i" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
6. "The Sights and Sounds of l and n" - Uses a retold version of the nursery rhyme "Little Red Hen" to teach the letters “l” and “n” using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
7. "Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Review" - Develops the understanding of the sounds of the letters “m”,“d”,“s”,“p”,“l”,“n” and the short sounds of the letters “a” and “i” through exercises that target recognition, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics.
8. "The Sights and Sounds of t and h" - Uses an authentic piece of nonfiction titled "Busy Baby Animals: Tiger" to teach the letters “t” and “h” using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
9. "The Sights and Sounds of o and b" - Uses a retold version of the nursery rhyme "There Was an Old Woman" to teach the short sound of the letter “o” and the sound of the letter “b” using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
10. "The Sights and Sounds of e and r" - Uses the nursery rhyme "It's Raining, It's Pouring" to teach the sound of the letters "e" and "r" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
11. "The Sights and Sounds of k and f" - Uses the nursery rhyme "Ride A Black Horse" to teach the sound of the letters "k" and "f" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
12. "Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Review 2" - Develops the understanding of the sounds of the letters “t”, “h”, “f”, “r”, “k”, b”, “d” and the short sounds of the letters “o”, “a”, “e”, and “i” through exercises that target recognition, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics.
13. "The Sights and Sounds of Hard g and Short u" - Uses the classic fable "The Lion and the Mouse" to teach the hard sound of the letter "g" and the short sound of the letter "u" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
14. "The Sights and Sounds of Hard c and w" - Uses an authentic piece of nonfiction titled "My Cake" to teach the letters the hard sound of the letter “c” and the sound of the letter w using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
15. "The Sights and Sounds of y and qu" - Uses the nursery rhyme "Little Girl and Queen" to teach the letter "y" and the sound of the letter combination "qu" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
16. "The Sights and Sounds of v and x" - Uses the classic fable "The Fox and the Crow" to teach the sounds of the letters "v" and "x" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
17. "The Sights and Sounds of z and j" - Uses an original story titled "Jake and the Zany Zebra Show" to teach the sounds of the letters "z" and "j" using vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, and phonics exercises.
18. "Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Review 3" - Develops the understanding of the letters "c", "z", "v", "w", "j", "g", "x", "y" and their sounds, the letters "i", "a", "u", "o" and their short sounds, and the letter combination "qu" and its sound through exercises that target recognition, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics.

Kindergarten is also a year of exploration and discovery of numbers. Major milestones for kindergarten math include:

• Developing a strong number sense
• Identifying numbers up to twenty
• Expressing different ways to represent numbers up to twenty
• Ability to sort and organize objects based on different attributes
• Recognizing basic shapes and units for measurement, time, and weight

The lessons are organized into multiple chapters that introduce and cover:

1. Tutorial - Teaches students how to use the math program. It teaches the functionality of buttons and shows students how to interact with and complete practice questions.
2. "Under the Sea" - Teaches how to sort and categorize based on similarities, differences, patterns and common attributes.
3. "Playtime in the Park" - Introduces shapes and basic concepts of spatial sense while reinforcing categorization skills. Students learn how to use positional words to describe locations and manipulate shapes from different locations.
4. “Let's Go On a Safari" - Teaches the numbers 1-10, the concepts of quantity, counting objects, reading numbers, basic graphing and equivalence.
5. "What's Cooking?" - Teaches the basics of time, temperature, calendars and basic units and tools of measurement.
6. "Numbers in the Neighborhood" - Teaches the numbers 11-20, number patterns, counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s, basic graphing and addition and subtraction.