Thursday, November 21, 2013

Ready Set Learn

Ready Set Learn is an initiative by the Ministry of Education to support children’s early learning and to help families make connections with the school system and local community agencies.  In our district the StrongStart Facilitators help plan and implement Ready Set Learn events in all the elementary schools.  I participated in three this week.  Here is a glimpse of what was planned.

The activities were planned around the book “What a Treasure!” nov 19 041             nov 19 042

After reading the story to the group the families rotated through several centres. 
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One centre was to retell the story using pictures on a magnetic board.

At each centre a tip sheet was provided for parents to take home.  These were copied from a parent’s handbook that the ministry use to provide.

Numbers
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This activity encouraged recognition of the numerals as well as counting.

Books
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Various books about treasure were available to enjoy.

Play
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An opportunity for the parents to observe how their children interacted with the props provided.

Getting Along with Others
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The children and parents took turns playing a matching game.

Talking and Singing
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We were listening to the songs that I recorded into qr codes.

Healthy Snacks
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Snack time incorporated literacy and numeracy skills by recognizing the shapes of the ABC pretzels, by sorting the fish crackers by colour and counting the raisins and orange sections.  Another focus was on independence by encouraging the children to try to peel the orange themselves.

At the end the children could pick a book to take home but first they crawled through a tunnel like the mole in the book.
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The pictures for retelling the story and for the matching game were found here.