Let the little ones use the colorful, engaging books which come with embark as a reference point for creating words with the magnetic letters. Easy to set up, fun, easy to clean up! Helps with upper and lower case differentiation, spelling, writing left to right, sounds and pre-reading scaffolding.
Have you “caught” your kid playing with the learning tools yet? Months ago I set the attribute blocks aside in a closet- ostensibly because the kids weren’t ready to use them. Might have actually been that I wasn’t ready to take the time to explain attributes and to also explain the detailed activities outlined in the booklet.
Nonetheless, this weekend I came upon the 4 year old fully engaged with the pieces without any adult “explaining” or supervising. Minus the Ven diagrams, he was actually doing the exact kind of sorting recommended in the booklet. I try to steer clear of too many maxims and oversimplifications about human behavior, but I do have to say this reminded me that natural curiosity and readiness are truly the building blocks for real, enjoyable learning.
Add a laptop white board from Lake Shore Learning and watching the DVD becomes an engaging rather than passive activity. Easy way to work on handwriting & spelling!
Do fall Sunday afternoons mean football watching in your house? I must confess that in my house, they do.
While I am an AVID Patriots fan, I truly can’t bear a whole game’s worth of loafing around and “wasted” time. While I can easily make use of the time doing chores and still keep an eye on the game, it’s my kids I’m worried about. I don’t want them sitting and watching TV for long periods of time. I’m not as concerned about “screen time” as I am about creating lazy kids!
So when “watching football” looks like this, I can handle it. By having the hard embark materials set up in a portable way, an on-the-fly embark numbers lesson can happen in any room. And we can turn loafing into learning. I like the large, magnetic “Spontan” board from IKEA shown here. This really doesn’t require anything special from embark, I’m sure thousands of people do this simple trick all the time!
The kids take it from room to room- along with the small plastic bin of numbers- or letters. I can live with that.
The embark site indicates there is a teacher guide and an assessment check list (hard copy) with the kit. I know some of you have already found it online and have printed some items out. Please know that I put in a request tonight for those to be sent to all of you. It will likely be a week or more before we can have them but I think it would be useful. In the mean time, I will try to figure out how to have copies made for anyone interested.
Our Pre-K Journey 