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The Perpetual Preschool Language and Literacy Ideas Name:
Date: 1-7-99Write each child's name on a card, and glue a photocopy of the child's photo beside it. Place a number of these photocopies for each child in a tub, and provide blank name cards. Children then choose the photo of a friend and glue it on their blank card. Next they locate the correct name card, and use it to write (copy) their friend's name. Once they have done three or four friends, they can be stapled into a booklet. (or pre-make the booklets, and let the children fill them with their friends' names and photos.) This helps them learn to read their classmates names, and gives great practice with matching, and the fine motor skills of printing and gluing. The kids love reading their books too! Date: 1-7-99During January we focus on literature for the entire month. To get the children and parents excited about reading at home I have a reading incentive program. I sent home 10 circles representing snowballs. After the children listens to a story at home the parents writes the title and author and the child's name. Then they bring it to school. They earn one piece of snowman for each snowball brought in. Each child is trying to build their own snowman. At the end of the month all of the children will receive a free book and book mark as a prize. I then take all the individual snowballs and put them on the bulletin board. If we get enough snowballs to build a large class snowman we will celebrate all of our reading with a pizza party. The title of my bulletin board is FROSTY IS GROWING WITH GOOD BOOKS. The last day of the month we have a Book Character Dress Up Day. All the children come to school dressed as their favorite book character. We have a fun time parading around the school and trying to guess who everyone is dressed as. Date: 12-26-98Rainbow Letters - Make large letters by using the outline style on the computer. The Avant Guard font is great for making simple manuscript letters. I later make a dot in the letter where the child is to start their pencil. Provide 3 or a whole set of colored of pencils or markers. Show the child how to trace inside the letter while ³staying on the road². Using each of the three colors,one at a time of course, the child will have produced a rainbow letter but also will have increased fine motor control through the repetition. Note: you can write the child¹s name, other labels or just single letters using a 36+ point Avant Guard outline font for more activities. Name: Dawn E-Mail: IntheBooks@aol.com As an alternative to junk food or nonproductive items I suggest Personalize Children's Books. These colorful, hardback books actually place a child's name and the name of three friends throughout the story. It promotes the reading and understanding of the story. It helps to create a fun and interesting reading environment for the child. This is an item that would reinforce and develop what the child has already learned in school Date: 12-5-98During or after a story I will ask children questions about what we have read. Making sure that all children have had a turn to answer a question. My Children really enjoy this activity.. Date: 12-1-98To enhance name recognition and practice their printing I have the children sign in when they arrive. I have their names on laminated strips. The kids write their names on a piece of paper while looking at the strip. Then they put the strip in a card holder. They love being able to show that they are in school. Date: 12-1-98Make a poster board with 12 pictures of words you would like the children to learn, possibly following a holiday theme like winter words. Put it on the floor and have the children throw beanbags. Have the children name the picture on which their beanbag landed. After they have become familiar with the words, tape copies of those same pictures on the walls, scattered around the room. Turn out the lights, point to a picture on the poster board, have a child name it and then find the matching one on the wall by shining a flashlight on it. We did this activity this past week and ALL of the kids loved it! They couldn't wait for their turn with the flashlight! Date: 11-19-98I have just started teaching pre-kindergarten and we are reading poems in my class. After each poem, my co-teacher and I ask the children to draw something that they remember from the poem. I then go around and discuss the pictures with each of the children. I write down what every element of their picture is and what the assorted figures in their picture are doing. The kids love this! Later in the day, when they have free draw, they will usually demand that I come over and write down things about their picture. It is a great way to start teaching the connection between written language and the spoken word! 10-23-98 Name: Carolyn 10-23-98 Name: kay 10-21-98 Name: Teresa 9-2-98 Name: Alison E-Mail: cooter697@aol.com Many of you may already do this but it's a great way to introduce the items in your classroom....Label everything!!!!!!!! Use index cards and write out the many things your children see and use everyday. Laminate then attach to each item... Easel, Dollhouse, Water Table, etc. This will help with word and letter association. The children gain confidence in beginning to "read." 8-26-98 Name: Terri E-Mail: tmn127@aol.com I like to make a sensory alphabet to reinforce the letter of the week. I write the letter upper anc lower case on a sheet of construction paper. Then the children glue i.e. buttons for B, cotton for C, etc on the letters. I save these and make them into a book that they take home at the end of the year. 8-9-98 Daylene Book of Families Create a class book about the children's families. Send home with each child a page out of a photo album. Explain to the parents that each child will contribute a page or two of information about his or her family and household members (such as favorite toys, places that the family has lived, etc.) The children can insert photographs, drawings, cut-outs from magazines etc. Anything that expresses who the child is is great!!! Once the book is compiled, read it to the children at circle time. Keep your class book in your book area so they can look at it anytime they want. Be sure that at the end of the year, you send each child's page home with them! 7-17-98 Name: Marcia E-Mail: MGoudie@aol.com A great language arts activity to do with prek/k aged children is: Using magnetic alphabetical letters let the children copy their names on an old t.v. tray or magnetic surface. They will be advancing their skills on letter recognition, name spelling and using small muscles. This is a fun activity for children. They will want to spend lots of time making their name and mixing the letters to do it again. Some children will use this activity to write their friends names, and others with advanced skills will be able to write comman words from their environment. 7-17-98 Name: Glenda E-Mail: bhingley@pacificcoast.net When I taught kindergarteners, we would discuss interesting things we had done during class time and I would write them down on a small strip of paper and post it for the parents to read. I would include their names, ie "Doug said we played with finger puppets and everyone laughed." They could associate their words with what I wrote and parents had an idea of what happened that day. We saved them all for the year and made a little book! 7-17-98 Name: Glenda E-Mail: bhingley@pacificcoast.net I teach toddlers and we find it very helpful to include sign language throughout our day to reinforce words and give visual clues to language. Many children who are not using many words find having some signs to be very helpful and less frustrating. Our speech pathologist encouraged us to use this approach and children who have started with a few signs have made very rapid progress in speech. Also, it is a LOT of fun for the teachers to learn and gives many new actions for familiar songs! 7-17-98 Name: Bobbi E-Mail: bcapwell@phoenix.net To reinforce reading each other's names-we make a hand and foot book. We paint 1 of our hands (or foot) and make a print. After it has dried, I put This is ________'s hand (foot). I then bound them together. Then the children get them and compare hand size and names. They even take the book to the attendance chart that has pictures and names to see whose name is whose. Later they even use the hand and foot book to copy names and letters. They always remind me to print the new kids in class so they can be a part of their favorite book. 7-17-98 Name: Bobbi E-Mail: bcapwell@phoenix.net To teach color words and recognition! On the last day of the week that we are studying a color we have a color feast. At the feast, everyone wears clothes that are that color and they bring in something to eat that is that color. My favorite was Yellow feast. We had lots of bananas, lemons, pineapples and yellow apples, butter, popcorn, cheese. We made lemonade, butter, banana bread. I had brought in yellow watermelon. It was a big hit as they had not ever seen it. Some were squemish about it but tried it anyway. The feast was a big hit! Each time we had a new feast, one little boy would ask,"Can you make the watermelon again for us?" 7-17-98 Name: Debby E-Mail: debscare@ecenet.com Who is It? Tape record each child's voice. Have them guess which child in on the tape. 7-1-98 Name: Gayle To teach kindergarteners how to spell color words, I use color-coded word strips and a pocket chart. I cut the letters apart and then mix them up to be unscrambled. 6-30-98 Name: Monica E-Mail: monicachawla@hotmail.com I created a game for teaching children letters and their initial sounds. Take a heavey poserboard and draw a grid, 4 squares (2 to 3 inches) across and 5 squares down. There will be total of 20 squares on the board. Decorate a border around this grid to make the game attractive and inviting. Laminate the board. Glue 1" square pieces of velcrow in the top 4 suares across the board. Cut out 26 , 2" square pieces from heavey cardboard. On each of these squares, with a felt marker, write upper case and lower case letter of the alphabet, eg. B b, F f, R r. Laminate these squares and glue 1" square piece of the velcrow on the back of each square. Use the opposite of the board velcrow, so these squares will stick on the board. Now cut out 4 pictures for each letter sound, glue it on 2" square poster board and laminate. Have one large box to store all the letters and picture squares. Take a small box, choose 4 letters and their corresponding pictures (16 picture squares) from the large box and keep in the small box. Using the velcrow, stick the 4 letters on the top row of the poster board squares. Have the children look at one picture at a time and put it in the right space. For example, choose Ss, Aa, Hh, and Bb, stick these letters on the top row with velcrow. Take a picture of apple and place in the square below Aa, picture of bannana below Bb square, picture of sun below Ss square. When the child is done placing all the pictures, the grid will be covered and the teacher can check the child's work. Try to change the letters and the pictures in the small box every week or when the children have mastered the letters on the board. The children enjoy looking at the new pictures each week and learn the letters as well as their initial sounds. Once you have made this game, you will use it for many years. Good luck! 6-30-98 Name: Rebecca E-Mail: bentos@esn.net In college I saw many ideas and created my own! I found that all the children love interactive charts! You can use a favorite book such as Silly Sally. On a big poster board using four sentence strips. Print very clearly. 1- Silly (blank space) 2- Went to town. 3- Walking backwards 4- Upside down. In the blank space put a piece of velcro then make a card out of pieces of sentence strips with each childs name on it. Put a velcro on the back of them. The children can then put up whatever name they want. They love to say thier name with the phrase from a book. This will help children recognize their name and other words. Also this may make them very interested in the reading center. You can use your own books and just pick out a phrase where you can replace a word. Be careful to make it gramatically correct. 6-6-98 Name: Teri E-Mail: teri123@yahoo.com At the beginning of the year I filled a 3 prong pocket folder with paper for each child. This was their very own book that they could write in or draw in any time they wanted. I dated each entry and if they drew a picture I had them tell me about it and wrote it on the page. At the end of the year I looked back at the pages and could see just how much they had developed over the year. 5-27-98 Name: kimberly E-Mail: skyraider2@centuryinter.net My daughters kindergarten class has show and tell of the "letter of the week." Thery bring something from home that represents that letter. Then they would write down all of the things that the children brought in on a big tablet. They also brought things that would represent a holiday, or a color or what ever else might have been going on during the school year. 5-27-98 Name: Tippy E-Mail: scottb@arkansas.net This idea works well with nursery rhymes as well as time. For "Hickory Dickory Dock" - Draw a large grandfather clock onto brown construction paper add clock face with regular numbers and laminate. Make two clock hands (hour and minute). Attach the hands to the clock face with a paper fastener (brad) so that the hands can be moved. Make a mouse out of gray paper and laminate Make a small hole a both ends of the mouse and at both ends of the clock. Run a length of heavy string through holes on the clock and through the mouse (so that the mouse can run up the clock) Tie the string ends together at the back of the clock. Children can put clock hand to any time on the clock and run the mouse up and down the string. Put an original copy of the rhyme on the clock but encourage kids to make up new rhymes with other times. 5-27-98 Name: Tippy E-Mail: scottb@arkansas.net To make story props for "Corduroy" and "A pocket for Corduroy" by Don Freeman, cut out large bear shapes from tagboard & add faces. Draw on overalls with markers. Punch holes into shapes to make sewing cards. Supply buttons and tagboard "pockets" for children to sew onto Corduroy. 5-27-98 Name: Teri E-Mail: Teri123@yahoo.com I love my writing center. In it I have an old manual typewriter, tons of neat and different writing utensils, wipe off boards, ABC stamps, a mailbox so that we can write and send each others letters, word cards, etc. I also include lots of different kinds of paper for the children to use. 5-26-98 Name: Cherilyn E-Mail: CherilynR@aol.com I use The Story Teller felt products so the kids can tell stories and make up stories. I use a Little Tykes easel and split them up into two groups, one on each side of the easel. Each group can then make-up or recite familiar stories and the felt pieces can be stored easily in the paint bins on the easel. 5-26-98 Name: Teri E-Mail: Teri123@yahoo.com To practice name recognition I made each child a fish cut out and laminated it and wrote their name on it. Then I placed a fish bowl and the children had to find their fish and put it in the fish bowl. 5-26-98 Name: Teri E-Mail: Teri123@yahoo.com I used this activity this year with my 3 year old class and my 4 year old class to practice name recognition. I went to the hardware store and they donated paint stirrer sticks for me. I painted these green.I then made a flower head for each child with their name on it (1st name for 3's and first and last for 4's). I laminated the flower heads. Then I hot glued the heads to the green paint stirrer sticks to make a flower.I then got a plastic flower pot (medium sized) and filled it 2/3 full of rice.When the children came to school in the morning they found their flower and "planted" it in the flower pot.They loved it and I'm sure your class will too!!! 5-19-98 Name: Beverly E-Mail: beverlyj@bue.garcoschools.org We collected puppets, stuffed animals and toys for all the animals in Brown Bear, Brown Bear. We let each child choose a toy and "read" that part of the book as the teacher turns the pages. Later, we put out lots of different toys and let them make up their own parts as the teacher writes them down. The children draw the pictures and we make our own book. 5-12-98 E-mail: Rlhfl9080 During the year my pre-kindergarten class studies a letter a week and with that letter I find pictures on the computer and print them out with removable labels ( in case we want to play a matching game with them later). While studying a certain letter these pictures are posted above the writing desk. When the week is over the pictures are place in our "word" box in ABC order so that the children will be able to search for wanted words in the future. I have found that the children enjoy writing their own stories more when they have the ability to find the words that they have seen before. 5-1-98 Name: nanse E-Mail: nanse484@RurulNet2.com URL: http://WWW.Virtual Zoo.com Each week we learn a different letter. Sometimes we take a newspaper and we cut out all kinds of letters sizes of the letter we are working on, and make a large collage out ot these letters to hang on the wall. The children just love doing the cutting on these, at the same time they are practicing there cutting and helping to recognize the letter, Capital and small case, all sorts of ways to print it too. 5-1-98 Name: Nanse E-Mail: nanse484@ruralnet2.com URL: http://WWW.Noah's Ark.com To help the children learn letters and sounds, we have a puzzle game where they can build words. I take tagboard and cut it into strips, about 3 to 5 inches in length and 2 inches in width, I print the word on the strip and cut it in a puzzle piece dividing it like, B/at,C/at,D/og, d/ad, h/at. and I also use colored tagboard. The children like to use these as puzzles. And they are learning at the same time. 4-10-98 Name: Andrea E-Mail: ACERKANO@AOL.COM Multi-sensory letter recognition activity Every week my pre-school class studies a new letter. To reinforce the letter and the letters we have already studied I have the children trace the letter in shaving cream. To modify the activity for some children you can provide them with the visual prompt of the letter. 3-29-98 Name: Amy E-Mail: adickson@seanet.com We just started a "reading wall" the children bring in anything from their home that they can "read" such as a Mc Donalds bag or a cereal box. We then stick it up on the wall as something that they can read. The children in my class are 4 yrs old and the love the idea that they can "read" these words! 3-26-98 From: dlwig@bellsouth.net Name: Donna I have a writing center in my classroom, but I call it "The Office." This is a very motivational title for the children. I have a telephone there and lots of writing materials (i.e. pencils, markers, colored, pencils, seasonal pens, etc.). I also place stencils, paper, children's dictionaries and old order forms there. They love to go and play office and they are experiencing literacy while they are there. This is a very popular center in my classroom. 3-17-98 Name: Karenkwa In my pre-kindergarten class we do a literature review of familiar stories, such as, The Three Little Pigs, Billy Goats Gruff, etc. During storytime we will discuss the different illustrators, the different story lines, and discuss our favorites. For extension activities I incorporate them into math for graphing, dramatic play for language development, block center for acting out the story, and writing center for "writing" individual versions of the story. I try to include something for each literature review into each center: Cooking pigs in a blanket or wolf stew; science: making houses out of straw, sticks and bricks; art: making playdough houses, cutting out characters to go into the houses; obviously the listening and library center focus on the different books and stories. 3-17-98 Name: Kaaryn E-Mail: cagann@genevaonline.com To inspire my preschool children and excite them about literature we build a reading tree every month. This is how it works...for every book we read we add a leaf to our tree. The leaves of the tree are tied into the calendar, for example, this month for March we have shamrock leaves. It works like this...at the beginning of the month we begin with the trunk of the tree, taped to a centrally located wall in the room. As we read a book or two daily we write the title of the book on the "shamrock" then tape it to the wall above the trunk. Slowly the tree grows as the month goes on. The children love this and become so excited! They often remind me to fill out the leaves for the day and they participate in hanging the leaves on the tree! 3-6-98 Name: Carol E-Mail: apple@wantree.com.au Australia We start our mat session every morning with the children sitting facing the easel - I sit alongside it - and as they watch I model writing by printing up our notice for the day. Today's notice read as follows: "Good morning my little wiggle worms. Today is Thursday, the 5th of March, 1998. Could you please make sure that you finish off your apple picture and start the one for the letter B. Don't forget to start joing the broken lines where the x is." Did it every day last year, and at one stage was typing them up and adding pictures for clues - children loved trying to guess what I would call them each day. Was so successful an activity that by the half year mark I had children drawing/writing their own and putting them on the easel for me to guess and read out to the class. Why I decided to write them in front of the children was to model printing, but mainly to start sounding out words with them. G......Go......Goo.....Good! Made them aware of just what a word was, as well as making them think! The message on the bottom always refers to something I want them to do - such as: finish off a piece of work, clean up extra well, sit up nice and straight and listen carefully or whatever. Having the date in reinforces days of the week, we talk about today - yesterday - tomorrow, and also the year. We finish off by having one child go across to our Days of the Week Bears and changing their hats (yesterday was, today is, tomorrow is). 3-6-98 Name: Kim E-Mail: LFizer9825@aol.com I have many centers set up in my room and the children love A b seas from Discovery Toys...they fish for letters and work on 1-to-1 letter recognition with caps and lower case. 3-6-98 Name: Kate E-Mail: kfairlie@mail.ozramp.net.au Australia I have a group of new three year olds this year and last week I scanned photographs of each child in the group and stuck them, along with the childs first, name onto the writing/drawing table. I covered each name and photo with clear book covering so they don't get in the way of the children working, and suddenly I have many children who are interested in not only writing their own name but forming letters and learning other children's names. It seemed a simple way to get us started with an interest in letters. 3-3-98 Name: Marlise E-Mail: mtiffany@gcnet.com In our KinderPrep classroom, we study one letter each week. I make the letter on the floor using masking tape. To practice our motor skills we walk forward, backward, sideways, hop, skip, tip-toe, march, and/or gallop on the letter while repeating the letter sound. For variety, some weeks we use the balance beam or tape cardboard tubes (to hop over) onto the letter. 3-1-98 Name: Susan E-Mail: bajabird@webtv.net This activity reinforces letter recognition skills. Print letters of the alphabet (all or just a few depending on the levels of your students) on an 8-1/2X11 piece of tagboard. Laminating is optional. Place "alphabet cereal" at the table and let students match the uppercase letter on the tagboard to the alphabet letter cereal. Students can save their cereal in baggies and eat it at snack time. Variation: print lowercase letters on the tagboard instead. Students must then match uppercase cereal letters to lowercase written letters. 3-1-98 Name: Myra E-Mail: pwcox@ibm.net I print a large letter, whatever letter we are studying that day or week, on a sheet of paper and then from magazines and/or newspapers I cut the same large letters out. During class I allow the kids to glue the letters I cut out on the large drawn letter. This is just a different way of getting the "feel" of how the letter is form. Variation: Instead of letters cut from magazines or newspapers, I have also used the popular shaped punches. Like apples for a, and butterflies for b, etc. 3-1-98 Name: Susan E-Mail: bajabird@webtv.net Our class does indepth study of each letter, usually lasting 1-2 weeks. During Circle Time, I will read a big book that has a lot of the letter in it that we are studying. While reading the book, I post a large copy of the letter that we are studying next to the book. I then have the kids play "I Spy the Letter ___" by looking for our letter of the week in the text of the book. I then bend a "Wikki Stix" stick into the shape of a circle and have the student come up and stick the circle around the letter that they found. (Wikki Stix are wax-like bendable sticks that are tacky. They can be purchased at upscale toy and educational supply stores.) 3-1-98 Name: Susan E-Mail: bajabird@webtv.net I take several sentence strips and staple them together. I then print the uppercase letters on the giant sentence strip leaving about 5-6 inches between each letter. I place this in the circle time area (since it is so long) during center time. I also place different letter manipulatives such as: foam letters, die cut letters, magnetic letters, letters printed on cards, etc. I then have the kids match upper case letter manipulatives to the upper case letters printed on the giant sentence strips. As kids progress, you can also use lowercase. 3-1-98 Name: Susan E-Mail: bajabird@webtv.net During center time I play an audio tape that has soft, calming rhythms, but is also educational. One really good tape is called: "Sounds Like Fun" and is sold by Discovery Toys. It is loaded with letter sounds ("apple, apple, a,a,a", "baby, baby, b,b,b), number counting, opposites, rhyming, etc. It's a great tape as it really keeps things calm while reinforcing a lot of basic skills. I hear my kids singing songs from it often. You can also make your own tape too. 3-1-98 Name: Susan E-Mail: bajabird@webtv.net When reading a big book to my class, I have the students come up, one at a time and point to a word of their choice. I then write that word down on a sentence strip card and place it in the pocket chart. Then later, during center time, I have the students come back to the pocket chart and pick 3 or 4 words. I also put out unifix cubes as well. I have students build "block words" with the unifix cubes and sentence strip words by counting how many letters are in the word and then snapping together the same number of unifix cubes. Have the students place their "block words" in a class box to share at the end of the day. Discuss with the children which block words were short, medium and long in length. You can even sort them as a group into these three categories, count and graph the results too. 2-28-98 Name: Cheri Aa *A is for apple *Have apples for snacks *Do "Apple prints". Cut apple in half, dip in red paint and press onto paper. do green thumb-print leaves on top of apple. Gee, there are many more and SO many neat ideas for each letter. Since most preschools do "letters of the week" or at least work on learning letters this is a much needed area. 2-28-98 Name: Gina E-Mail: burkhard@ecsu.campus.mci.net We practice letter sounds with each others names, both childrens' and teachers' name. One year we were learning the "l" sound and as we were; a teacher named Lisa came in to work and she was about to pass through our classroom (we are an open building preschool); so naturally we used her name as an "l" sounds. After that discovery, they said "hi, Ms. l-l-l-l-l-l-Li-sa" every day! Also, after that, they seemed to be able to find other letter sounds in the beginning of words/names easier. We also use lunch to practice our letter sounds; prompted by the smell of lunch or maybe by the fact that it's time to clean up for lunch, we try to guess what we are having for lunch and identify the beginning letter sound. 2-28-98 Name: Sue E-Mail: clew!texasonline.net I once learned at a workshop I attended that children learn something if they sing it or eat it. To reinforce the letter of the week, we eat something that begins with that letter on Friday. Sometime we cook or something are eaten raw, but the children usually remember that letter by what was eaten. 2-24-98 Name: Nancy E-Mail: yllibcire@aol.com To reinforce letter recognition, beginning sounds, and words that begin with certain letters, we play M&M alphabet bingo. Use regular bingo playing boards, but place M&Ms on each square instead of bingo chips. Be sure to have the kids count their own M&M's! Using bingo flash cards, peek at a letter then either give the kids a word with that beginning letter(Alligator, Alex,Awesome,Ants in the pants etc..)If they have letter A, they get to eat the M&M. You can vary this game a lot--Show the kids the letter and have THEM give YOU a word that has the beginning sound,etc. This is a favorite game of mine that is easy to play with my 16. This is also great with color and shape bingo, and with number bingo! Enjoy! 2-24-98 Name: Dina E-Mail: dinamccardle@juno.com I teach a PPCD class. We recently did a unit on winter clothing, and read the book Froggy Gets Dressed. I had the children go through the sequence of identifying the appropriate clothes to wear, building on vocabulary. We had a classroom volunteer to dress like Froggy. My students enjoyed this hands-on-experience. Another book that can be used is The Jacket I Wear in the Snow. 2-23-98 Name: cindy E-Mail: cin69@webtv.net Take a picture of each child in your class. Make teddy bear shapes out of tagboard. Mount your childrens pictures on the tagboard bears and add the words for "Brown Bear Who Do You See" and the child's name. Cover the pages to protect them and make it into a book. This makes a great transition as well as a fun way for the children to learn name recognition as well as learning their friend's names. 2-19-98 Name: Sue E-Mail: clew@texasonline.net We learned several nursery rhymes about sheep--Little Bo Peep, Mary had a Little Lamb and Baa Baa Blacksheep. I made small tagboard sheep and put each child's name on a sheep. I then hid them around the room (under the table, behind the door, in the blocks,etc.) I then gave each child verbal instructions where to find their sheep. It really reinforced listening skills and they really had fun playing the game. 2-19-98 Name: Sue E-Mail: clew@texasonline,net To foster alphabet recognition and sound, children make a book for each letter. The cover is lightweight tagboard in the shape of something that begins with the letter. The children cut out the cover. I have cut donated computer paper for pages in the book to that shape. Children then choose magazine pictures of things that begin with that letter and glue in their book. They take their books home and "read" the story to their family. 2-14-98 Name: Dena E-Mail: dln1939@aol.com I teach Pre-kindergarten and "invented" this letter reinforcement activity quite by accident. Everyday we create a class list on chart paper of what the children liked about school that day. (everyone contribution should be different - no repeats) After reading it together I ask the children to find the letter of the week in our list. (example: all the Lls). Each child gets one turn, sometimes two, to underline or circle one letter. My students love this activity and I have noticed them looking for and identifying letters in other printed areas. Name: Cathy E-Mail: CL9177@aol.com Each time we introduce a new letter of the alphabet we reinforce as many times as possible. On our bulletin board is the letter and then a word and picture showing what the word is...all beginning with the original letter. Name: Sue E-Mail: clew@texasonline.net At Valentine time, I put a sign in our writing center that says "I Love You". The children love to write that message and send it to their friends in class. I also post all the children's names so they can "address" their messages and send them. We set up a post office in the housekeeping area where they "buy" stamps and our postman delivers the letters to the children's cubbies. 2-8-98 Name: Judi E-Mail: WithAnEye@aol.com To help my kindergartners associate the written word with their spoken words, I use this exercise: I look for interesting pictures in magazines, cut them out and mount them. I'll choose one and hang it in the classroom for a couple days without comment. Then I'll ask the children if they have noticed the picture and what they think about it. Then I'll take down their comments and post them with the picture. I have used one of the milk ads (famous people with milk moustaches), a GAP ad (with a cute kid), animal pictures, etc. 2-7-98 Name: cindy E-Mail: cin69@webtv.net Make a class cookbook! take a moment with each child, ask them what their favorite food to eat is and then ask them how it is made. Simply write down or record everything they say. When all your recipes are given, type up the recipes and make enough copies for each child to have a book, let the kids decorate the pages of their cookbooks being careful not to color on the words. These make excellent mother's day presents and the recipes are delightfully funny. Enjoy this project it takes some time to prepare the books but they are definitely worth it.
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