Guide to Activity Books, Multisensory Lessons, and Interactive Digital Teaching Tool
by Jan Z. Olsen, OTR
INTRODUCTION
Wood Pieces with Music
Polish, Sort and Trade Wood Pieces 49 Wood Pieces in a Bag
50 Positions and Body Parts with Wood Pieces 52 Curves and Circles 54 Vertical, Horizontal and Diagonal Positions
DRAWING
COLORS AND COLORING
80 Developing Crayon and Coloring Skills 82 Teaching Crayon Grip 83 Night Sky—Aim and Scribble 84 Aim and Scribble—Twinkle 85 Aim and Scribble—Fireworks
86 Aim and Color
87 Aim and Trace
88 Red/Green
89 Yellow/Purple
90 Blue/Orange
91 Pink/Brown
92 Gray/Black
93 Colors
PRE-WRITING
96 Hands-On Letter Play
98 Capital Letter Cards for Wood Pieces
99 The Mat for Wood Pieces
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70 ABCs on the Sing Along Album
Letter and Picture Match 73 Sign In Please! 74 Name of the Day
75 abc Sing and Point
76 Capital and Lowercase Letters
77 Lowercase Matching
100 Air Writing
101 Door Tracing
102 Roll–A–Dough Letters®
103 Stamp and See Screen®
104 Wet-Dry-Try on the Slate Chalkboard
105 Wet-Dry-Try Student App
106 Teaching Letters with Technology
107 A+ Worksheet Maker
WRITING CAPITAL LETTERS
110 Writing in My First School Book 112 Developmental Stages in Writing 113 Developmental Teaching—Capitals First 114 Where Do You Start Your Letters?
246 Help Me Hold My Crayon 247 Help Me Write My Name
Capital Formation Chart 253
Lowercase Formation Chart
This is Readiness & Writing
Pre-K children learn through movement and participation. They need explicit modeled instruction with playful learning opportunities to explore and internalize new ideas. Our playful approach is at the heart of our success.
Our award-winning program draws from years of innovation and research to provide developmentally appropriate multisensory strategies for early writing.
Young children are not ready to sit still and focus for long periods of time. They learn best when they move, manipulate objects, build, sing, draw, and participate in dramatic play.
Multisensory Activities and Manipulatives
Pre-K children need instruction tailored to their different styles of learning. You need tools to meet these needs. Our unique Pre-K programs make teaching easy and rewarding for you in many ways:
• Developmentally appropriate lessons that break difficult concepts into simple tasks
• Hands-on multisensory materials that entice children to learn
• Research-based approach that provides a
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• Variety of materials to introduce and repeat throughout the school year
• Friendly voice that connects with children
• Developmental progression that builds on what children already know
A Developmental Curriculum
Pre-K children will enter your classroom with different and continually evolving abilities. To meet the needs of Pre-K children, a curriculum must be accessible at all points within this wide spectrum of needs and skills. It should invite participation, build a base of understanding, and challenge children to continually grow.
This curriculum:
• explicitly models and teaches skills
• supports the wide range of ages supported during the school year
• teaches the developmental order by starting at the level that does not assume prior knowledge or competency
• enables children to excel by respecting their present level of development and building from there
Activity Books and Teacher’s Guides
ACTIVITY BOOKS
• Fun, engaging lessons with child friendly design that are intuitive and developmentally effective
• Carefully selected images and activities that align with Pre-K skills
TEACHER GUIDE
• Scaffolded instruction that builds readiness through multisensory instruction
• Explicit lessons provide teaching language for the student activity book pages
Interactive Digital Teaching Tool and Student Experience
• Digital version of the Teacher’s Guide
• Menu of digital resources to model
• Just-in-time microlearning applicable to the lessons
• Warm-Up Multisensory activities to just click and share to engage and prepare children for the lesson
• Alternative activities for three-year-olds and early four-year-olds who need more hands-on activities before moving to the Activity Books
Professional Learning
Find the tools and implementation support you need to help students succeed.
• Embedded point-of-use teaching supports and resources available
• Microlearning strategies alongside your digital Teacher’s Guide that anticipate and address common questions
• Joyful hands-on, minds-on learning experiences that build commitment, competence, and confidence to effectively use the Readiness & Writing program
Features of the Activity Books
My First School Book
In Readiness & Writing, our instructional approach helps children develop fine motor skills and teach handwriting while boosting confidence. This means that our carefully scaffolded approach is important to follow to insure early learner success.
After children spend the first few weeks engaging in the Readiness activities using the manipulatives and engaging in music and motor activities, it’s time to introduce them to My First School Book
This is the time for children to focus on their grip while learning how to use crayons. Yes, this includes a bit of scribbling and coloring.
First School
• These steps help children develop their grip and finger control and build stamina while teaching Pre-K skills such as colors and shapes at the same time.
• Readiness & Writing encourages the use of crayons as young children begin their writing adventure. Notice the thicker lines are easier for children to use and ample clean space is provided for crayon use. FLIP Crayons are provided in the Readiness & Writing for use too.
Next, children are introduced the capital letter pages. Children are still using crayons as they practice steering the crayon as they start and stop.
Why are CAPITAL letters easiest to learn to print?
• All are the same height.
• All are formed with four strokes: Big and Little Lines and Big and Little Curves.
• All are easy to recognize and identify.
• All are big, bold, and familiar.
• Children prepare for each letter by practicing pre-strokes. These appealing pages should help children with the vertical, horizontal, curved, and diagonal lines used to make letters.
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• Children will be very familiar with the letter strokes after learning and using the Wood Pieces and other manipulatives during the Readiness section.
• Crayon and drawing skills continue to be refined as they are encouraged to add their own details to the exemplar image.
• Children then use the familiar smiley face or arrows to continually reinforce that letters start at the top. Easy, fun, but explicit step-by-step models are available for each letter for children to follow.
Features of the Teacher’s Guide
The Readiness & Writing lessons have been carefully planned to include everything you need to teach a lesson and more. The carefully designed lessons provide a consistent format that is easy to follow and give you just what you need for a successful implementation. This lesson format is used in My First School Book and My First Lowercase Book
In My First School Book, capital letters are paired with pre-stroke pages. While the lesson structure is similar to the Letter R lesson, early instruction provides children with an opportunity to build vocabulary, make connections, and practice strokes that often need to be practiced before combining all the strokes to write letters.
Pre-Stroke for R
Prepare children for the diagonal in R with this pre-stroke page. Diagonal lines are the most difficult.
Activity
There are rakes on this page. Count the rakes and talk about raking leaves. Look and Learn
Children can make their hands take on characteristics of tools. Use open fingers for a rake, closed fingers for a scoop or shovel, and fisted fingers for a hammer.
Trace and Color
Pre-Strokes for R
Children put their crayons on the arrow. Say, Slide down the rake handle. Stop. They may draw and color fall leaves.
✔ Check
Observe crayon grip. Use the “Crayon Song” and pick-up activities. See p. 45.
Support/ELL
• Instructional notes provide the why for the instructional focus.
• Activity: The pre-stroke lessons follow these steps:
- Introduction: Identify and teach the object or pre-stroke on the page.
Rakes are tools. Animals use body parts as tools. Bird beaks work like tools. Look at woodpecker beaks and pelican bills. More To Learn
Look What We’re Learning
Foundation Skills
• Imitate teacher’s body movements
Comprehension
• Listen to perform a task Writing
• Hold a crayon with proper grip to write
• Use helping hand to stabilize objects and papers
Big
Numbers & Operations
• Verbally count a set of objects
• Recognize that the last number said is the total Sensory Motor
• Use same hand consistently to hold crayons
• Use fingers to hold crayons
• Move fingers for finger plays
• Look What We’re Learning: Learning domains and benchmarks.
- Look and Learn: Lessons continue to make connections while building opportunities to build those fine motor skills.
- Trace and Color
Pre-Strokes: Children trace the stroke following the teacher’s direction. Add to the drawing and color the picture.
• Letter Lesson Heading: Letter is shown prominently at the top with key words centered for teaching the letter.
• Activity: The letter lesson follows these steps:
- Introduction: Identify and teach the letter on the page.
- Look and Learn: Find the letter on the page. Associate the letter with the word and the picture.
- Color and Draw: Color the pictures and add drawings.
- Trace and Write: Crayon-trace the letter with teacher direction.
• Check: Confirm if correct writing habits are being developed.
• Support/ELL: Suggestions for modifying or simplifying the activity to make it more accessible.
• More to Learn: Ways to extend learning by adding complexity or variety.
Activity
This is the R page. Do you know R words? R names? R sounds? Have you seen a rake? Have you ever used a rake? What do rakes do?
Look and Learn
Let’s find the Rs. Look. There’s a rake. Rake starts with R. Talk about one handle.
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Color and Draw
Color rake any color. Consider adding leaves and grass. Demonstrate.
Trace and Write R
Finger trace the R at the top of the page. (Say directions.)
Let’s write R. Put the crayon on the . Big Line down, Jump to the , Little Curve to the middle, Little Line slides down.
✔ Check
Observe if children make D, P, B, and R with the Big Line first, and the next part on the right side. Do they use good habits when play writing? Don’t criticize or correct. Continue to teach good habits.
Support/ELL
Demonstrate tracing R with Capital Letter Card R Then let children trace too. It is helpful for them to watch others trace first.
Look What We’re Learning Foundation Skills
• Use correct top-to-bottom, left-to-right directionality for letters
• Sequencing
• Listen to oral directions to attend to a simple task
Oral Language
• Respond to simple questions
Writing
• Hold a crayon with proper grip to write
• Use helping hand to stabilize objects and papers
• Trace capital letters
Sensory Motor
• Use same hand consistently to hold crayons
• Use fingers to hold crayons
• Look What We’re Learning: Learning domains and benchmarks.
Vocabulary rake one handle leaves
• Vocabulary: Teach important and/or new words within an activity.
Interactive Digital Teaching Tool
The Interactive Digital Teaching Tool (IDTT) makes planning, teaching, and engaging children in Readiness & Writing fun and easy.
HOMEPAGE
All you need to do is log in to the homepage and select lesson content from the Teacher’s Guide and Activity Books.
LESSON CONTENT
Plan and customize lessons to fit your children’s needs.
• Access the suggested digital resources with just a click.
• Use the additional suggestions for three-year-olds or children not ready to complete pencil and paper activities yet.
• Click on the microlearning support on the lesson. Spend a couple of minutes on professional learning that will help you successfully teach the lesson.
• Select your favorite Digital Teaching option to customize each lesson.
