Week 2 Preschool & Kindergarten Learning Center: Daily ELA Learning Activities

Day 1: Rhymes

Looking for more?

• Have you seen our Week 1 activities for preschool and kindergarten students?
• We’ve also released Week 3 for more daily activities. Take a look!

Self-guided activities (with a little parental help):

1. Gather a collection of household items and toys.

Make sure all of them have a rhyming partner (e.g., doll/ball, truck/duck, block/sock/rock, car/star, frog/dog, man/can, bear/chair, two/shoe, plate/eight).

2. Ask your child to match the objects that rhyme.

3. As a variation, choose only one item or toy (e.g., rock).

Send your child on a hunt around the house looking for other objects that rhyme with it (e.g., clock, sock, chalk).

Family time activity: rhyming catch!

1. Find a soft ball (or stuffed animal).

2. Say a word (such as cat) and toss the ball to your child.

3. After catching the ball, your child says a word which rhymes with your word (e.g., hat, mat) and tosses it back.

4. Continue until you can’t think of rhyming words.

5. Silly, nonsense words are also great as long as they rhyme!

Day 2: Parts of a plant

Self-guided activities (with a little parental help):

1. Look through books for pictures of plants.

What parts do you see? Name the parts of a plant for your child (e.g., stem, leaves, flowers, roots).

2. Go on a neighborhood plant hunt.

Talk about the plants you find. Do all leaves look the same? Do all plants have the same number of flowers?

3. After the neighborhood plant hunt, ask your child to draw a few of the plants they saw.

Label their picture with the plant parts.

Family time activity: eat every part of a plant!

1. Using food from your fridge, build a plant on your child’s plate:

• Roots: carrots, potato, beets
• Stem: celery
• Leaves: lettuce, parsley, spinach
• Flower:  broccoli, cauliflower, artichoke
• Seeds: sunflower, sesame

2. Now eat up!

Day 3: Short vowels

Self-guided activities (with a little parental help):

1. Short vowel hunt.

• Write each vowel (a, e, i, o, u) on a blank piece of paper. Be sure to write using lowercase letters since that’s how vowels are most commonly seen.
• Have kids trace each vowel in many different colors to make rainbow vowels.
• Send your child on a hunt through the house to find objects with each vowel sound. Don’t worry about how the word is actually spelled, just listen for the vowel sound (a piece of chalk should be placed on the o since it has the short o sound). Discuss the objects they chose.

2. Sing a version of Old MacDonald using all of the vowels.

(“Old McDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o, and on this farm he had an A, e-i-e-i-o. With an /a/ /a/ here, and an /a/ /a/ there,” etc.)

Family time activity:

1. Write each letter of the alphabet on a note card or small piece of paper.

Place the vowels upside down in one pile and the consonants upside down in another.

2. Take turns choosing two consonants and one vowel to build a 3-letter word.

Be sure to put the vowel in the middle.

3. Sound out the words together.

Did you make a real word or is it nonsense?

• Hint: Nonsense words can be a lot of fun! You can even make up pretend definitions for your nonsense word.

Day 4: Counting

Self-guided activities (with a little parental help):

1. Tell your child to choose 10 different cars (or blocks or stuffed animals).

2. Write the numbers 1–10 on separate pieces of masking tape.

Stick one numbered piece of tape to each car.

3. Make “parking spots” for the cars on a piece of paper or cardboard and write one number in each slot.

The numbers don’t have to be in order!

4. Have your child match up the car with the same numbered parking spot.

5. For a variation, draw dots in each parking slot instead of numbers.

Now your child will have to count the dots to find the correct parking spot.

6. Challenge: Encourage your child to line up the cars from 10 to 1 and try counting backwards.

Family time activity: guess my number!

Write the numbers 1–10 on separate note cards or simply use a deck of cards with the face cards removed.

• Mix up the cards and place them upside down.
• Pick a card, but don’t let anyone see what you have picked.
• Provide clues to help your family guess your number (e.g., “I have this many fingers,” “there are this many people in our family,” etc.)

Day 5: Nouns

Self-guided activities (with a little parental help):

1. Noun hunt.

• Write easy-to-read nouns on sticky notes (e.g., tub, hat, frog, rug, desk, etc.). You can even write names of people and pets!
• Give your child the stack of sticky notes and tell them to read each word, sticking the post-it onto the correct object in the house.

2. Watch this video about how to remember the definition of a noun.

WATCH: We Asked: How Do You Remember The Definition Of A "Noun"?

2. Silly writing.

• Write easy-to-read adjectives on a set of sticky notes or cards (e.g., big, red, glad, soft, etc.)
• Place the stack of noun sticky notes (from the previous activity) upside down in one pile and the stack of adjective cards upside down in another pile.
• Help your child write a simple sentence starter: I see a _______ ________.
• Tell your child to choose an adjective card and a noun card—no peeking when you choose!—and write them in the sentence (e.g., I see a red frog). You might get some wacky sentences!
• Draw a picture to go with the sentence.

Family time activity: noun charades!

1. Put the same noun sticky notes into a bag.

2. Take turns pulling out a noun and acting it out for everyone else to guess!

Day 6: 3D Shapes

Self-guided activities (with a little parental help):

1. Gather objects from around the house in each of the following 3D shapes:

• cylinder (e.g., can, chapstick, water bottle)
• sphere (e.g., ball, marble)
• cone (e.g., hershey’s kiss, party hat, ice cream cone)
• cube  (e.g., dice, Rubix cube, box)

2. Have your child sort the objects by shape.

Name each of the shapes as you sort.

3. Now put the objects in a bag.

Take turns feeling an object in the bag and guessing the shape using only your sense of touch. No peeking!

Family time activity: race for the shape!

1. Write the names of the 3D shapes on note cards or small pieces of paper and place them in a bag.

2. One player chooses a card and reads the shape name out loud. 

3. All other players race around the house looking for an object with that shape.

4. The first person back with an item of that shape wins the round!