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Teaching the Kao Kids: Routines I

February 2, 2014

I went to the warehouse sale at The Learning Store last year and returned with quite a few great finds.

These posters are two of them:

I’ve placed them on the walls of our learning corners and incorporated a daily routine for the kids: they literally go face the wall everyday, hurhurhur.

For three-year-old Becks, she “faces” the Letter Formation poster and traces each Uppercase and Lowercase letter of the alphabet with her finger. It helps that this poster has arrow directions and my instructions for her is that she follows the numbers and the directions of the arrows. She’s currently still learning letters and letter sounds (she’s not moved on to words yet except simple ones like ‘I’, ‘You’,’He’,’She’, ‘Yes’, ‘No’) and this is supposed to help her trace in pencil with more ease.

I didn’t have this poster when Ben was learning his letters so he went straight to pencil and tracer. He still gets his directions wrong sometimes when he writes his words and finds shortcuts to skip certain strokes (like he’d argue how the lowercase letter ‘m’ should be written like the MacDonald’s sign just because it looks more cool) but with Becks she’s accurate to the tee when it comes to writing her letters on paper. I credit this daily routine of finger-tracing for that.

I also find the Numbers 1-99 poster extremely helpful in helping the kids count and recognise numbers. Ben is learning numbers 1 to 100 and he often has difficulties moving on after the 9s. He would go, “41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49… er… then what?” when he reaches the next tenth and I find that making him “face” this poster helps. Sometimes I just make him read out the last row on the right (10, 20, 30, 40…) to get him to think in tenths, and this bolsters his confidence when he does his math homework.

Posters can have a positive effect on the process of learning, especially in the visual sense. I find that when used appropriately and sparingly, they can help more learning to take place for my preschoolers. With good, age-appropriate posters, I get to create a little literacy corner for the kids at home that can foster independent learning.