Community Helpers : Pre Academic

This activity was not only designed to practice alphabet recognition and color matching, but it also provided the opportunity to discuss the difference between a letter of the alphabet and a letter you send in the mail. A child would pick a letter, name it and place it in the matching color envelope.

Another game that we have played for several years (above) is made from a simple mailbox cutout taped to strawberry baskets or any container with a similar shape. These containers are hot glued to a board. All eleven colors are represented in four shapes. The children pick a shape from a basket, name the shape and color then sort it into the matching color mailbox. We played this game to The Mailman Shape Song found on the music page.

My children love SoftTouch/kidTECH software titled Monkeys Jumping On A Bed. To extend this activity we use a foam board with a single strip of white velcro running down the center to place our mitt monkeys from Lakeshore Company. The children find the number and count out the matching monkeys.

Every morning we start our day with what we call calendar activities. With each new unit we have new calendar activities that develop skills such as name recognition seen above. Here, we sing the Hooray Hooray song before the children pick out the picture of the community helper they want to be when they grow up and place it by their name. The children then put on a costume ( purchased from Lakeshore) to represent that worker and we sing the Community Helper song. (See music page.)
Below is a felt puppet that is filled with beans and hung from our ceiling. After we put up the date on our calendar, our fire man is sung back and forth while the children practice their rote counting. We count to the number day it is in that month. This activity is used in the Box It or Bag It Kindergarten math program by Donna Burk, Allyn Snider and Paula Symonds published by the Math Learning Center in Salem Oregon.

The Learning Workshop is a newly discovered resource for educational materials. The book below was made from their Career Alphabet Teacher Resource Packet. A tape can also be purchased with their delightful Career Alphabet Song which sings along with our book.
We received special permission to make this into an electronic book. We added pictures of the students in our class and added a touch of color. These pictures were then put into our electronic book using HyperStudio, ClickIt! (from Intellitools) and the Intellitkeys keyboard with an alphabet overlay. When the children touched a letter our electronic book would show the alphabet page and sing the song for that particular letter. This electronic book can also be played straight through. The children were delighted to see their faces though out the book.

The folder game pictured below was developed to reinforce and identify the different community helpers that we were studying. It also is used to work on color recognition goals. Each child has their own folder. The community helper picture circles are attached with velcro and there is a small piece of velcro on each color. To play the game the teacher would say...."I spy a fireman and he likes red, so find the fireman and place him on the red square." Sometimes the children were asked what color they thought the community help would like. This type of game keeps the children's hands busy because each child has their own board and they don't have to "wait their turn" which is very difficult at this age.

The small plastic firemen seen below were found at our local Dollar Tree store (they also had policemen). The counting mat was made with Boardmaker software and the large rubber dice was purchased at our local educational store. We used this game for number recognition and counting.

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Ms. Sharon Bölle

Assistant Superintendent

For additional information, please contact: Ms. Kathy Van Velzen by e-mail.