preschool play for lifetime learning
I am no bookstore owner, but when it comes to our home library, I sure love my kids to pick out good books. Well, since we only have good books, I like them to pick out books – of any kind. The problem with traditional bookshelves + kids is that the books are all crammed together, the kids can never put them back on their own, and they don’t even really know what is on the shelf, nor are they curious – especially pre-readers (both of my kids are pre-readers right now).
So when I was looking around for ideas for my kids’ room, I saw these shelves (and a lot more just like them) on Pinterest. And then, I put up a few myself:
The new reading area in the kids’ room (please excuse the pink walls – we’re working on a paint color… any suggestions?)
The books are layered 3-5 books deep in spaces, and I fully intend to rotate them every few weeks, just to make sure some new books are out on top.
“The power of face-out works even at the lowest levels of literacy. When researchers observed a kindergarten classroom library for one week, 90 percent of the books that children chose had been shelved with the covers facing out.” (here)
I had read about this a loong time ago and had every intention of making some face-out book displays for the kid’s books, but I never got around to it. I got these shelves at IKEA for about $15 each. More expensive than rain gutter, but it was the easiest solution for me, since I am the main handy-man around here (handy-woman? eh, whatever). Three screws and it was in. I am going to go back and use some wall anchors because I couldn’t find the studs (my husband is out of town – which might have had something to do with that problem. Ha ha)
Before I even had the books up on the shelves, both Little and Baby were devouring book after book (Little is 4, and Baby is 2, so they don’t actually read them – but they can tell the story pretty well from the picture, which is great in terms of literary development).
These books will make it easier for us to pick the books we want to read for bedtime, as well. Which means faster bedtime routine (which I love – not that I don’t cherish bedtime, I really do – I just don’t like how long it takes to get to each step. I prefer to spend my time actually reading to the kids rather than hunting down books).
We keep a “book basket” in the living room, and I want to make a book sling for the family room downstairs so any book will have a home in any room in our house, and so books will be found in every room. The more places we can find to put books, the more our children will read – I’m sure of it!
How do you market reading to your children?
I wish I could remember where I first saw this idea. It was probably listed on a Link & Learn over at No Time for Flash Cards, but I can’t find the link, and don’t really feel like searching through a bazillion blog posts right now. The kids are cranky.
We haven’t really been doing much with letters. We talk about them all the time and talk about the sounds, and I write letters for E and show him how to write them, but there hasn’t really been a method to our letter madness. I have finally decided to make our letter learning a little more structured.
Today we made a “letter box” right now it is just an unused drawer from one of my storage drawers in the craft/preschool room, but it will eventually be replaced with something more permanent.
We taped the “letter of the week” on the box and found things that start with the letter “B” (since he doesn’t know how to write or read yet, we went mostly by sound, which will make C, S, and K tricky, but we will probably skip those and come back to them as sounds instead of individual letters).
To “prep” for finding things for the box, I first wrote the letter B on our whiteboard and then had him help me come up with things that start with B. I drew pictures of the things we named (bumblebee, bump, and ball). Then I sent my little Einstein to find things from his toy box that started with “B.” He walked off saying to himself “Buh, buh, buh, buh…” and then I heard, rather excitedly, “Bunkbed!” He ran back to me and said “Bunkbed starts with buh!!!” I congratulated him on his find, and then reminded him that his bunkbed would probably not fit in the “Buh box” so he would need to find some more things. He came back with some blocks, saying “I can make a bunk bed!” I redirected his thinking and mentioned that he had some blocks and I asked him what sound “block” starts with. He caught on pretty quick and said “Buh!! B!” and threw them in the box. He did pretty well after that and came back almost immediately with a baby bottle, which he actually referred to as a “bebida” which means “drink” in Portuguese but is the word we use for a sippy cup. Hey, good enough for me, so we put it in our box. He eventually came back with a book and a ball, and I helped him find a bowl and a bag. He found a boot on his own as we passed the shoe basket with our box on our way upstairs. And if you look closely in the box, you will find a colander, which does not start with B (neither do the other names for it – strainer or sieve) – but E didn’t pick it for that name. He put it in the box because, “It’s a bump!” Hey, who am I to tell him it’s not a bump?
We’ll keep the “Letter Box” upstairs where he can see it, and hopefully each day we can talk about the things that are in the box.
I know we’re making progress with letters and sounds, because he will constantly make a sound and ask me what letter makes that sound. I will take that as a sign that he understands what letters are for (they represent sounds). I never thought he would be asking me what letter stands for the sound he is making – I guess I always thought he would be asking me what sound a letter makes. It’s interesting how every child’s brain works a little differently. Either way, I’m super happy that he is learning sounds, and that he is associating them with letters. I think he may indeed be on the brink of learning to read. We’ll just keep working on getting all the sounds down, and then we’ll start putting together some combinations.
How did you learn letters and sounds? What letter/sound activities do you do with your kids?
Well, not quite, but we are certainly working on it. Last week we made these cutout letters. I want to laminate them so they will last longer, but we’ll see if I ever get around to it.
I drew the letters on sheets of cardstock (two on each sheet) and had the kids cut them out. In hindsight I realize I probably should have done the lowercase letters, since when you read, you read lowercase letters more often than uppercase letters – and I would like them to be able to point out the letters in our picture books. Knowing the capital letters isn’t going to hurt them, but I wish I had started with lower case. Maybe we’ll work on that next month.
Before I cut out the letters, I let the kids color them up. They weren’t really interested in coloring the letters, so I helped. Then we cut them out.
As we were cutting them out, Baby and E started stepping in some cheapo plastic planters I had bought for my poinsettias. I didn’t want them to break the planters, so I suggested that we sort the letters. We had three planters, so I tried to think of ways letters have three “types” – the best I could come up with was “curvy letters,” “pointy letters,” and “letters with holes.” After I showed E what I meant, he excitedly sorted all the letters. Baby still doesn’t get sorting, and just wanted to move the things around in the buckets. We’re working on it, though.
So far, E can recognize R, G (it has a “table” inside) and a few other letters, although R is the one we did first, since our (real) last name starts with R. Baby recognizes that things are letters and numbers, and will point them out to us, but all of them are “I!!” E also knows that “R is for Rainbow and (our last name).” At first he was saying “R starts with Rainbow” but thankfully we were able to correct that pretty fast.
My goal is for E to be able to recognize all the letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case) by the summer so that we can start learning sounds. I’m not as interested in him learning sounds right now, but I do think it is important for him to start being able to recognize the letters, and hopefully to be able to write his name soon.
What things are you doing to prepare your child for reading? What age do you think children should start learning sounds? Should recognizing letters and words come before learning sounds? Or should sounds come first? Or should we just expose our kids to both and let them figure things out as they go?
Babies don’t need to be able to read, and I don’t think that a baby being able to read is any kind of predictor of their future success in life. However, a baby loving to “read” (so, for a baby, that is being read to) is very significant.
I try to work on “pre”-reading skills with Vincente, and since I plan on homeschooling for at least pre-school and kindergarten, I want to make sure that I am prepared to teach him to read.
Over at No Time for Flash Cards, they are starting a series on teaching your child to read. The blog is geared to parents of young children (think, toddler – preschool) but the article is really helpful for getting your child ready to read.
I recommend the article, and the blog. The blog is fabulous and I really enjoy reading it. It has really helped me in the theme of this blog – that learning happens in child’s play, not in a classroom or by doing worksheets. No Time for Flash Cards has a wealth of activities and games and play that kids love but is also educational, which is what I want to emphasize in my children’s life. Since we have been doing rainbows this month, I think we are going to do the Color Wheel Match this week, along with making a rainbow for the front window, which we have been slacking on.
Go check out their blog, it is fantastic!
Not by who you would think. This guest post is by Little Einstein. As part of our play-based preschool, we are encouraging Little Einstein to dictate to us so we can type. He doesn’t know how to write or read, but I believe encouraging him to let me write down things he dictates to me will encourage a desire to learn to read and write.
Well, that went okay. It’s a work in progress, and a three-year-old’s attention span is limited, but we got a lot of creativity out of it! when I asked Little Einstein to tell me about his lizard, he told me that he wanted me to put a picture of the lizard on the blog, so we whipped out the webcam and now you have a picture of one of L.E.’s most prized possessions – his lizard. Then he started singing and dancing (which I should have caught on the webcam for this post, but didn’t – next time!). Then he didn’t really want to talk about the lizard because he had already danced and put a picture on the blog.
We haven’t done this in a while due to a move, but we’re picking back up on things now, so hopefully his ... stories ... will get a little more interesting. (as if they aren’t already!)
We’re headed to the library tomorrow for story time, and hopefully we’ll be able to get a library card, even though we’re only going to be here for a month. This summer has been the worst for us for library time due to some family emergencies.
Reading time is coming back full force! (we would be reading without the library – since we have a huge collection of classic children’s books, but they are all stored for the summer while we’re “in between houses” – we only have two or three with us, but the library fills in the gaps for us.
