10 Embedded Pre-Literacy Activities... Here's some ways we've been doing it!

1. Play with SOUND! So much of decoding words in the future starts with careful listening in early childhood.

2.  SOUND Explore Tables: this table had all things beginning with the /b/ sound. Simply naming the objects in the Explore Table produces natural opportunities to HEAR alliteration.  Some of the things in this set up included "beach sand," books, bears, bugs, butterflies, balls, buttons, large beads, flashcards with B words and letter, and blocks.

In addition to objects beginning with the /b/ sound, hidden magnet B letters and wooden letter B's were in the "beach" to be found and touched as well.  Finally, as we played, we made stories with the toys, like: "The blue bears sit on buttons around the bead table. They are having bumblebee soup!" or "Bugs are riding on the bus all the way to the beach!"

3.  Chatting with friends! It's true that this is a pre-literacy skill because conversation with peers and adults help children's vocabulary grow which is required for reading comprehension in the future.

Role play isn't a waste of time!  It's a natural opportunity to talk, assume the role/feelings/behaviors of another person or animal, and develop cognitive and language skills.

4.  Rhyming pups: we love playing with puppies and kitties! These toys made by Learning Resources allow us to make mis-matched rhyming pups which are terribly silly!  When we fix the pups, we HEAR two words that rhyme correctly.  (See how much hearing factors into literacy?)

5. Letter names, recognition, and shapes: Letters are symbols for SOUNDS, and as children develop, they memorize the names and sounds of each letter.  Pre-literacy includes being able to see different kinds of lines that make up letters. Some letters have "holes." Some letters are completely curvy.  Other letters are made up of straight lines that go in different directions. This peg toy by Coogam helps children look at what kinds of lines make up a letter, and focus their attention on which direction those lines are going.

6.  Read a book, and act it out! Caps for Sale became a huge hit for our kids last week, and we used our rug cushions to pretend to be cap peddlers.  Acting out a story demonstrates the ability to recall the order of events in a story, and understand the plot of the story. Both skills are critical for reading comprehension.

7. Read for fun! During Work Time, the children often choose to look at books or invite the teacher to read them individually.  Young children can identify the difference between pictures and texts, tell their own version of the story based on pictures, and ask for help to know "what do these words say?". 

8. Gross motor development: This seems to be an unusual skill set to include with pre-literacy development, but they are connected. The brain learns to integrate information from multiple senses (visual, tactile, vestibular, proprioceptive, and even auditory) through gross motor opportunities. As the senses become more integrated, the child develops the ability to focus their eyes on targeted words on a page, track words across a page, and even keep letters oriented and in the correct order while reading.  Without well developed coordination and balance, decoding and tracking words becomes SO laborious for the reader, that reading comprehension becomes nearly impossible.

So climb, and dance, and run, and crouch, and jump as much as possible.

9. Scanning: this Melissa and Doug toy is intriguing to young children because they enjoy the cause and effect of dropping in the spool and see it spin down the ramp, but this also helps the children develop the ability to track an object moving left to right and back again.

10.  Drawing: The children have free access to the Art Area during Work Time and are provided multiple choices for mark making (paint, markers, crayons, pencils). The advantage of free form mark making is that it engages more areas of the brain than tracing does. Here is a sample piece of art done by one of our two-year olds that demonstrates she is developing the ability to draw curves, straight lines, circles, and dots.  These are all lines she will later learn to associate with letter shapes, and are a precursor to writing.  Furthermore, she is learning that marks have meaning.

It seems like "just play," but each of these distinct (yet related) methods of developing pre-literacy skills are fundamental for children to experience prior to formal academic education.  How can you bring more of these ideas into your home and environment? :)

Observe and Report- Fall Leaves

The leaves are changing before our eyes!  We collected some leaves from a few different species to examine in Small Group.  First we used magnifying glasses to study the leaves from White Oak, Redbud, and Tulip Magnolia trees.  We looked at the veins, the emerging colors and spots, and edge serration.  We talked about our observations, generating words like: bumpy, green and brown, crunchy, orange and brown, fan-shaped, etc.

Then we used glue to adhere the leaves on a large sheet of paper to make a Leaf Poster.  To finish this activity, Ms. Harmony wrote the child's words on the paper near the leaves that they described.  Modeling writing allows the children to learn that spoken ideas can be recorded with letters in writing.  See it, think it, say it, and then write it!  This is a great way to actively practice memorization.

Preschoolers as Scientists

"Let's do what scientists do!  We'll study something, look at it up close, touch it, smell it, listen to it, and think... then write down what we've learned.  We can record our ideas with words, pictures, or tracing."

This was our Small Group prompt on Tuesday.  The children were each given a clipboard, pencil and sheet of paper.  They could choose a magnifying glass, and from a variety of star fish, sea shells, and shark teeth from the basket.

Some things we learned during this activity is that only the swirly shells sound like the ocean.  Flatter shells, starfish, and shark teeth do not.

We used a lot of descriptive language like: smooth, spiky, rough, tooth-like, sharp, spiral, striped, and so much more.  The students were encouraged to write or draw these words.

We even learned where the starfish mouth was!  Imagine eating from your belly button!  Starfish have a mouth right in the center of their bodies.  Tracing the starfish was challenging as well.  All of the starfish that we used had five legs.

 Here are some samples of the notes the children made.

Toddler "K" (age 2) "traced" her star fish by drawing circles around it.  She made some squiggles which she indicated were the words "starfish."  Ms. Harmony helped her write out the letters so another adult could read her words.

Friend "K" (age 5) traced her starfish and shark tooth independently.  She also drew her representations of seashells and labeled her diagrams.  She sounded out the words she wanted to write and wrote the letters herself.  If she was uncertain about a sound, Ms. Harmony would help her identify the correct letters like, /sh/ and /oo/.

Writing a Plan

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!

Harvest Shenanigans

Sorry parents for the delay in Blog posts from last week!  We had some internet issues that needed to be resolved over the course of a few days.  But I still got pictures of these cool kiddos working hard at Harmony's House!

On Thursday we did some neat art that was also a sensory experience.  Each child was given a bubble wrap cut out shaped like corn-on-the-cob.  We have been talking about Fall time being a busy time at the farms because farmers are working to harvest all the remaining fruits and vegetables before Winter comes.  The bubble wrap "corn" was super bumpy to paint on and the children remarked how funny it was under their brushes.  They were given red, brown, and yellow paint.  Not every corn cob is yellow you know!  They were encouraged to paint their corn in the way they liked.

After the bubble wrap was printed and declared "done," the children pressed a paper down on top of the bubble wrap to make the print.  These are the results!

Preschool children can learn to make "Concept Maps" or "Idea Webs" that connect ideas.  For Circle Time, we created this web to review all of the concepts we have talked about in the past few weeks related to Fall.  We also used the web to anticipate what we might be learning next about Halloween! The children chimed in with lots of ideas which Ms. Harmony represented with both pictures and words.

A Place of Caring

This month an all-time favorite building material was added to the Toy and Puzzle Area: Magnetiles! These were combined with the loose parts from March (CareBears, rainbow cubes, fabric squares, and cotton balls) to create an elaborate plan with bears, beds, breakfasts, birthday parties, cookies, and more!  The beauty of open-ended magnetiles is that they can be used to build anything, helping to develop creativity, fine motor skills, spatial awareness, story telling, and concentration.

Some of our bears woke up with colds, and they had to go back to bed to rest.  Some of the bears gathered for magic cloud or rainbow food.  Using magnetiles, a kitchen with a sink an oven was built to wash and bake cookies.

Friend "B" enjoyed painting.  This is a regular plan for her.  She enjoys seeing the colors mix on the paper, and observe the brush strokes of different sized brushes.  She also worked to dress up TinkerBell at the updated Alone Table.

Finally, the girls moved to plans in the House Area.  Specifically, they took turns being parents and doctors.  Not only did they use medical tools to diagnose and treat the babies' illnesses, but they used a notepad and pencil to record notes and write prescriptions!  Friend "Z" is interested in letters and reading, so she sounded out words like "Sally" and "Cold" and recorded those words.

Too soon, Work Time was done.  Students and teacher were satisfied with the hard work that was done in cooperative play today, both in the Doctor's Office and in building the CareBears Bed 'n Breakfast.  Can't wait for next week!