Welcome!

Hello families!

Welcome to The Nest's Digital Learning Space.  During The Nest's closure, I will make a daily post with activities, videos of book read-alouds, "wonder" questions, links to resources, etc.  Click Follow on the left hand side.

Games/Resources/Videos: At the top of this blog's page, you will see a bunch of colorful icons.  This is a tool I created especially for our learners!  The top row is parent resources, second row is Christian education and social emotional development, third row is gross motor activities, fourth row is art, fifth row is math games/videos and last row is literacy games/videos.

Journals: As we live through a historic time, please consider keeping a journal with your child documenting what your day was like, what activities you did, how your family is feeling, and so on.  This could be a notebook or just pieces of paper stapled together. This will not only serve as a keepsake for your family, but will encourage your child to continue growing their fine motor and literacy skills. Here is how we do activities like this at school:

Step 1: Teacher gives child an open-ended "prompt" or question to think about.
Step 2: Child brainstorms their answer to the teacher's prompt and then draws a picture representing their thoughts.
Step 3: Teacher asks child about their drawing and writes down what the child said on the bottom of their work.
Step 4: Teacher encourages child to write about or label their picture.  Depending on where the child is at in their literacy/writing journey, this could look like wavy lines, symbols, strings of alphabet letters, words spelled phonetically, or conventional print.

You can do this at home!  Each time your child does a journal entry, encourage them to tell you about their drawing.  Then write down their words!  This shows children that oral language has meaning and can be represented in print and models conventional writing. Then, encourage your child to write what they said.  It doesn't have to be spelled correctly, or even written in letters.  Some children will put a squiggle, and this is fine!  They are beginning to develop a sense of written language even if they just put a squiggle.

Here is a letter chart we use at school.  Print this out for your child if you can!