1 – tools 3 – engage in literacy and math activities regularly 4 – school ready 8 – parents advocate
A - Parents understand that they are their child’s first teacher – they truly seem to get this concept now. That is a HUGE attitude change!
K - Parents understand the importance of routine for child in learning and living.
K- Parents understand how to use the power of observation to compare and contrast objects.
S - Children recognize patterns.
S & K – Parents can apply estimation and understand its importance within math and their children’s learning.

A. PARENT LEARNING

Opening Activity

• Welcome and introductions
• Sing Down. Give class a category; have them write down (or remember) a song from a specific category e.g. Animals “How Much is That Doggie in the Window” “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” The parents share their song/game and as you go around the room, they say their name plus their song. Each person must repeat. At end, facilitator writes down on large chart paper and parents can copy for their own list.

Review

• Rhythm and Rhyme
• Importance of Singing
• Literacy Play – Key Message #2

Introduce Topics
Observation/ Patterns and Routines/Understanding Pictures/ General Concepts needed for Reading

Observation
Observation is using all of your senses to learn about the world. Everything we know has been learned through our senses. The more senses we use, the more we learn. There are many ways of using observation in daily life to help our children learn about the world. You can develop observation skills as you do everyday things with your child (e.g. look at the cereal, listen to the cereal, smell the cereal, touch the cereal, taste the cereal). Link this to multi-sensory learning from class 2 by reviewing the main points from the multisensory lesson.

Compare and Contrast is observing objects and noting how they are the same or different. Children use compare and contrast to develop oncepts which becomes prior knowledge. Comparing and contrasting helps us to stick new information to old information. It is how we build on our already present skills (another term for this is scaffolding). To compare means to look at the similarities. To contrast is to look at the differences.