Some followers have recently read about how students at Harmony's House make plans prior to play. One of the other planning methods included "writing a plan." The children of Harmony's House range in age from two to five. How does a child, who likely cannot spell or even know many letters, "write a plan?" Can they? Yes. Here's how we do it!
An important pre literacy skill is to be able to hear separate words in a sentence. So, although most of the students in preschool cannot write words with letters, they do have the fine motor ability to draw a line. They practice hearing and writing by drawing one line per word as they say it. In the plan featured above, the child (age 5) wrote one line for "Toy and Puzzle Area." She then listened to her own words and wrote the first letter that she could hear: 'T' 'a' 'P' and 'A.'" When she returned to her plan at Recall Time, she added a picture of herself doing the plan in the Toy and Puzzle Area.
Below is a plan written by another school friend (age 3). He wrote, "Art Area." Because he cannot write letters yet, he simply drew the lines to represent each word. Then he added a picture of himself with a paint brush. When he returned to this picture at Recall Time, he described the colors he used and how they mixed together. He also detailed his painting method of doing quick sweeps with the brush called "scribble scrabble! scribble scrabble!"
Here is a sample of another child's plan (age 4): she drew lines to represent "work with balloons" and Ms. Harmony wrote the words beneath the lines. She drew the balloons that she wanted to play with. When she came back to her plan at Recall Time, she colored the balloons, added letters to the "words" that she wrote, and talked about what she did with her friends.
Did she follow her plan? Absolutely! And she wrote about it too!
