1. A Typical Tools Kindergarten Day
Teachers- this ppt gives parents examples and actual practice of the classroom activities.
NOTE- You can insert additional pictures here or show your daily schedule or use the child icon schedule.

2. Mystery Word
This is an example of the Mystery Word games. Using a special card Children try to figure out what word starts with the same sound as the target word (hidden from sight in this picture). They compare beginning to beginning sounds and eventually the beginning of one sound in one word to an ending sound in another. In the pictures the target word is truck and children compare the ending sounds bell, duck and giraffe.

3. Opening Group Activities
Attention focusing activities-fingerplays/songs
Share the News
Freeze game
Message of the Day
Storylab ( instruction in comprehension strategies)
Teacher—Have parents participate in the Freeze game using the Freeze game icons and the Greg & Steve song “Freeze Game”
Purpose: To teach skills like remembering, rhyming, singing, literacy skills, but at the same time work on self-regulation.

4. Attention Focusing Activities: Songs and Fingerplays
Teacher—teach parents one of the children’s favorites.

5. Give parents some of the examples of topics that you would give to children. For example, “What did you eat for breakfast?” “Who brought you to school today?”
Purpose: provide an opportunity to talk, to learn to listen to another person, make a friend. Research shows that children feel more friendly to people that they know and that they talk to. This starts community building.
It often helps if you give parents an example. Ask them to share with each other” what would be the 1st thing you do if you won the lottery tomorrow?” It really gets people talking! Then show how you summarize and ask them if they now know a little something more about the person sitting next to them now.

6. Story Lab Fairy Tales Magic Tree House Books Visualization
Character Empathy
Inferences
Story Grammar
Story Comparison
Other Times
Active Listening
Connections
Background week
Vocabulary
Magic Tree House Cycle
Predictions
End of Chapter
Other times
Story Lab
Teacher- This is a quick reference so parents understand the depth and breadth of your instruction in this area. You aren’t just reading a book, it’s a all done with a purpose and clear goals.

7. Story Lab
Teacher- Explain how children listen to stories and teachers provide instruction in strategies needed for comprehension

8. Literacy Activities

9. Dramatization—Sept to Dec
Children listen to Fairy tales. They act out the story and take turns acting out different versions of the story. In October, they read the Magic Tree House Chapter Books. These are at a vocabulary level of the end of Second and beginning of 3rd grade. The books are about a time traveling brother and sister. There are 23 adventures. Each chapter ends with a cliff hanger. The teacher reads the story and the children summarize it in writing. Then they dramatize the story up to that point and they dramatize what they think will happen next.
Dramatizing supports self-regulation development, creativity, remembering the story, and comprehension skills. Children who are good at this develop better comprehension skills. Children will also write chapter summaries and fact books related to the Magic treehouse stories.

10. Scaffolded Writing Dec. Sept.
Purpose: In Tools, children learn to write to read. They learn to use writing to help them remember stories and plots.
They write plans for what they are going to do, summaries of chapters, story boards that show the beginning, middle and end of a story.
Teacher: They use Scaffolded Writing. Explain that Scaffolded Writing was invented by the developers of Tools of the Mind and is an accepted reading/writing strategy by the International Reading Association.
It uses a line to stand for a word, like a manipulative stands for numbers. Children quickly learn to make their own lines and by December are putting their own letters on the line to represent the word. They progress quickly from using the first sound to writing more and more sounds. Children use what is called estimated of phonetic spelling
Dec.
Sept.

11. Scaffolded Writing January June
By January children write 4-6 times summarizing chapter books and writing facts that they listen to the teacher read from non-fiction books.
The spelling becomes more and more correct as children learn word patterns that help them with spelling.
Research shows that invented spelling does not cause children to make conventional spelling errors in first grad when they learn to spell correctly. Invented spelling is correlated with early reading because it shows that children are exploring sounds and using them to represent words.
These pictures are from at-risk classrooms
January
June

12. Learning to Read Buddy Reading 2 Buddy Reading
Children practice reading to each other. At the beginning of the year it is just “pretending to read” In January, they read with a partner( in teacher directed groups) to learn reading strategies and to practice prompting the partner. .

13. Learning to Read
Individualized Reading In the winter, children receive one-on-one instruction at their own level of reading at least once a day.

14. Phonemic Awareness/Phonics Games
In addition to reading instruction, children play games with words and sounds. These are teacher guided or they are self correcting so children learn things correctly and there are few mistakes.

15. Center Plans & Learning Plans
During the Literacy Block, from September to December children make Center plans where they say what they are going to do to dramatize stories. From January to June, children have a learning plan, where they keep track of what they are going to practice on their won during center time. They set learning goals during a learning conference each Friday with the teacher. Gregory’s goal was to do “ten words in the sound center” he usually only did 8 and he wanted to try more.

16. Literacy Conferences
Teacher- if this has not started yet, explain when it will. Every Friday is conference day. Teachers go over what children have learned with the child and discuss their work. Teachers praise children for working hard and for overcoming obstacles. The goal is for children to say what they feel proud of. It is designed as a time for teachers to help children set learning goals for the week: Pay more attention. Practice 3 times.

17. Graphics Practice
Children draw shapes to music. They stop and start and draw to the tempo. Figures get harder and harder with more steps to remember and more letter-like characteristics. By December children practice letters. They practice penmanship in a center starting in January.
This shows Graphics Practice in December in Kindergarten
Purpose: Practice writing skills like holding the pencil correctly but also self-regulation (stopping and starting)
Teacher—Demonstrate this activity with parents following along using a marker and a piece of paper.
Remember to start the activity with a pretend story scenario.

18. Math and Science
Teacher- explain that the math/science block happens daily. Explain how Science( and social studies) will be connected with literacy because you will be studying places and things Jack and Annie encounter during their Magic Treehouse adventures. Parents who want to help their children should be encouraged to read non-fiction to them that relates to the topics being studied.

19. Timeline Calendar Weather Graphing
Show examples of these activities from your classroom. Discuss graphing and how the timeline calendar is done. Practice with parents.
Purpose: Teach about time, that time is a continuous and it introduces children to the idea of a number line which has been found to be an effective mental model of number.
Weather graphing, also to teach about graphs.
Also self-regulation is embedded in these activities, too.

20. Freeze on the Number
Typical of Tools Freeze Games. Teacher holds up a card with objects or a numeral. Children dance and then freeze signifying the number with their fingers
Note they do different figures as well where they have to kneel, etc, This is an example of physical SR practice being embedded in daily classroom activities

21. Venger Drawing
Show examples of children’s drawings if you have some already from this activity.
This ability to think “outside the box” and to move shapes in the mind and create represent that on paper are related to skills on Mathematics aptitude tests and relate to advanced math skills.
Children are given a geometric shape –in this case a trapezoid. They have to turn it into something in a drawing.

22. Numeral Game
Children practice counting. One child has a hand and is given a number and has to count out the number of objects into a cup. The partner has a check. The child checks to see if the child is correct by using a checking sheet that has the number with dots representing how many objects should be counted. The checker matches what the “hand” did and can say if there are the right number, too many or too few without having the teacher tell the child if he is correct. This is an example of the self-correcting games used in Tools.

23. Addition Problems
Mrs. Wishy-Washy used 2 bars of soap to wash the pig for the first time. After the pig rolled in the mud, she used 2 more bars of soap to wash it. Then the pig jumped in the mud with the cow and the sheep and Mrs. Wishy-Washy had to use 3 more bars of soap to wash the pig. How many bars of soap has Mrs. Wishy-Washy wasted on one ungrateful pig?
We teach the numberline as a model for children to use to solve word problems. This is a typical word problem from the end of the year.

24. Number Line Word Problems
Logic Trap Puzzlers Sadie has a tire repair shop. One day she had to fix the tires on 2 cars and 3 bicycles. Which tires did she fix more of—car tires or bicycle tires?
We teach children to think about math—to use it to solve logic problems.

25. Please find more information about Tools of the Mind curriculum in the
Parent Kindergarten Brochure.
Teacher—Add other Tools activities from your classroom. Have copies of the Parent Brochure ( can be found on the Tools website) to hand out.