Supporting Students at Home: Pre-K

Overview

This guide is designed to provide ideas to parents for engaging children in learning at home. The activities provided are intended to help keep children intellectually active and find opportunities for exploration and experimentation outside of the classroom. Parents are encouraged to make selections from the activities that best suit their children’s needs and interests.

Sample Daily Schedule

Parents please note that this is only a suggested daily schedule.  Feel free to adapt times and activities to what works best for your family’s daily needs. Most of all remember to have fun during this season.

Academic Activity Choices

Each instructional area has a “choice menu” of options. Consider choosing a variety of activities from a few different content areas each day. These options include opportunities for physical activity, reading books, and using technology, online resources, and television programming. Conversations with your child about the activities they are completing will help to support communication skills and understanding. Please see the following topics which include a variety of activities that you can choose from for your child each day. 

Topics:Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 4

Language & Literacy

• Read books every day or use a mobile device to access stories from the Denver County Public Library
• Spell your name with magnets. Find objects that start with the same letter. Make up words that rhyme with your name. Repeat with family members’ names.
• Practice writing your name and the names of your family members. Draw pictures to match. Turn the pictures into a story to read together.
• Sing songs with your family. Play word and sound games. Make up silly sounding words.

Mathematics

• Go on a shape hunt. How many shapes can you find? Try to find circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles. Then find your spheres, cubes, and
• Count items around the house. How many plates do you have at dinner? How many socks do you have in your dresser drawer?
• Sort items such as socks, stickers, toys into groups. Count the number of items in each group. Which group has more or less items?
• Build structures with blocks, legos, or empty boxes. Compare the sizes.
• How high is your tower? How wide is your tower? Draw your tower.  

Science

• Do you have a pet at home? Do you see any animals outside? Or, do you have a favorite stuffed animal? Draw a picture that describes what they are doing, using as much detail as possible.
• Think about cause and effect. What do you think would happen if you pushed softly on a ball? If you pushed hard on a ball? What other toys can you push or pull in different ways?
• Use your senses to explore. In your home, what feels soft, hard, smooth? What tastes bitter, sweet, sour? What makes a loud sound? What makes a soft sound?

Social Studies

• Keep a home science journal! Add an entry each day by writing or drawing. What do you wonder? What can you observe (see, hear, feel)?
• Look at family photos and talk about the people and places. Describe the places. How are they the same or different from your home?
• Make a list of simple chores and tasks to do around the house. Keep track of what you do. Can you teach someone else how to do the chores?
• Play a new board game every day. What are the rules you have to follow? How are the games the same and different? What game is your favorite?
• Talk and read about different jobs in the community. How do those jobs help people? What job would you like to do? Why?

Physical Well-Being and Motor Development

• Sort fruits and vegetables. Help make a healthy snack to share with your family and friends.
• Do activities that help build large muscles: walk, hop, skip, gallop, tiptoe. Practice moving like your favorite animals.
• Do activities that help small muscles grow: drawing, painting, using scissors to cut, build with clay.

Fine Arts

• Build eye-hand coordination by playing catch, jumping rope, and tracing letters.
• Use water, food color, popsicle sticks, and ice molds to make ice paint. Paint pictures for your friends and family.
• Listen and dance to different types of music (e.g., pop, hip-hop, country, classical, R&B). Pick a different style every day. Use different household items to tap a beat. Make up a song. Play loud and soft sounds.
• Act out your favorite story by dressing up in costumes. Or, make and use puppets to act out your favorite stories.

Digital Resources (Suggested resources that can be accessed digitally)

Free Resources

• PBSKids
• Denver Public Schools Digital Library
• Denver Public Schools Academic Technology Menu:

• Scroll down to “School Breakdowns” Select the “Your School” tab (and scroll to find your school)>Go!
• You will find the following tabs:

• “Parent Consent Required” tab: Resources approved via parent consent at your school
• “Parent Consent Not Required” tab: District-approved resources

Educational TV 

PBS has a variety of educational TV. Here is how you can access PBS in the Denver area.

• Over the Air (Antenna)

• Rocky Mountain PBS: Channel 6.1
• RMPBS KIDS: Channel 6.2

• Cable TV (Comcast)

• Rocky Mountain PBS: Channel 6 & 658
• RMPBS KIDS: Channel 245
• Create/World*: Channel 248
• On Demand: Channel 1 ("Your Colorado")

• Satellite (DIRECTV) and Satellite (Dish Network)

• Rocky Mountain PBS HD: Channel 6

Ideas para actividades con los padres en español:

• DPS LION Databases: PebbleGo, Britannica Escolar
• Las Provincias 
• Bebesymas 
• Sapos Y Princesas