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Literacy Activities For Early Years – We’ve had a lot of fun with fine motor skills these past few weeks, especially writing activities. Doodles starts school in September and is really into homework right now (let’s hope he keeps that enthusiasm going for years to come!!!).
Both Doodles and Ooodles love this activity and it’s so easy to set up. Simply place some of the above ingredients on a tray or baking tray and encourage your child to write/draw with sand/flour/paint etc. We usually start writing with our fingers, then a lollipop stick, then a brush, and then a three-pointed pencil. I usually draw or write patterns and letters on a piece of paper for the kids to copy, and sometimes I use printed cards that I’ve made of our names, common words, etc. Activity 2 – Gel Sensory Bag What do you need?
Literacy Activities For Early Years
I love these sensory bags. They are so easy to make. Pour plenty of washing up liquid into the bag, sprinkle with glitter, close the bag and seal with tape. You can also use paint instead of detergent. I taped 2 of them to our kitchen door/window for Oodles to finger paint on. She likes to push the paint/gel around the bag. Doodles uses a larger bag lying on the table. He usually plays with it first by pushing all the liquid to one side or pushing it with a lollipop stick. Then he writes with his finger or pencil, practicing the letters and writing the patterns beforehand. Activity 3 – Dough and Straws What do you need?
Low Prep Sight Word Activities
This is a version of a great activity I spotted on Kids Activities Blog, which is a really great site for tons of kid-friendly activities. First, have your child roll out a flat piece if it is play dough. Draw a letter in the dough with a pencil, if the child can, encourage him to do it himself. The child then traces the letter by placing straws in the print of the letter. Activity 4 – Peg Boards What do you need?
Peg boards perfectly develop fine motor skills. Both D and O love using our peg boards and I am constantly collecting pegs around the house. Here you can see the doodles that form the letter D using pins. Activity 5 – Prewriting Writing Worksheets. What you need?
Doodle likes to do “homework”, he feels grown up when he has to do worksheets. I’m not a big fan of overdoing worksheets, but they do have a place in early learning. D usually practices using the pads first before being given a sheet of paper so that he has a mastery and sensory experience of writing, before moving on to the structured use of pen and paper. Prewriting patterns are the basic shapes, curves, zigzags, waves needed to form all letters and write fluently. Activity 6 – Magnetic letters and a baking tray What do you need?
I use this activity to help D learn his name, phone number, and other common words. This is a great way to teach letter and word shape recognition. I create my own grids and laminate them so they can be used over and over again. D most looks for the right magnetic letters and places them in the right place on the tray grid. For a phone number it’s exactly the same, only using a number!!! I hope you find some of these activities useful. I will be adding to the list in the coming weeks! The most important thing is to make this early literacy/pre-writing experience as fun and positive as possible!
Preschool Christmas Activities
Tagged Early Literacy, Education, Fine Motor, Kids, Kids Activities, Parenting, Preschool, Preschool, Sensory, Toddlers Activities for Kids Early Literacy and Numeracy Messy/Sensory Play It’s never too early to start developing literacy skills and helping kids build strong the basics when they start school. Although it is not your responsibility to teach them to read and write, you should help them prepare so that they are ready to learn. There are many ways to help them develop a confident and enthusiastic approach to literacy.
Literacy is a key competence that allows us to understand the world and find our way into it. There are several aspects to consider; in addition to reading and writing, literacy also includes comprehension and communication skills.
It is not difficult to incorporate the development of literacy skills into the daily life of the kindergarten; after all, communication is the basis of all our activities. However, there are many activities you can implement (or tweak) to further strengthen these skills. They can be divided into four areas:
Being able to recognize all the different letters of the alphabet is a key element in learning to read. Provide children with lots of resources to play with, such as stamps, letter cutters, magnetic letters, letter beads, letter foam mats, letter puzzles. There are so many ways you can support this – here are just a few ideas:
The Best Math And Literacy Learning Activities For Preschoolers
Play letter recognition games with kids like letter hunt, letter matching, letter sorting, letter bingo, letter of the day.
Make your own set of magnetic letters with the kids using cutters and air-drying clay; paint them and stick magnets on the back.
Tape 26 pieces of paper (as big as you have space) to the wall, one for each letter of the alphabet (you can cut them into letter shapes or just write the letters). Have the children fill them in with stickers, collage pictures or drawings of things that start with each letter.
Everyone knows the importance of reading with children, and every nursery should have enough books for all ages. Simply reading to children is very valuable in itself, but there are many ways you can make story time more interactive and improve their comprehension and communication skills:
Early Years Maths Milestones By Age
Discuss the book as you read. Ask the children questions such as ‘What do you think will happen next?’ or ‘How do you think she feels now?’
Copy pages from a well-known book and ask the children to arrange them as they go to tell the story.
Make a story bag using pictures drawn/glued on cards or small toys/objects from the nursery. Ask the children to pull them out one by one and use them as story props to create their own stories.
Have fun exploring words, play with rhymes and help build children’s vocabulary. Here are some ideas:
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Sing songs and poems together; come up with little nonsensical rhymes with the children (eg ‘the fat cat sat on the rug’).
Create a word game by writing pairs of rhyming words on cards with pictures (drawn or cut out of magazines). This can be played as a memory game (cards face down) or as a simple matching game (cards face up).
Remember to always describe what you are doing or what you are looking at and explain new words to children if they do not understand. Invite the children to describe the things.
Play I-spy with colors or shapes, like “Spy, with your little eye, something blue” or “something square.”
Cool Bug Activities For Kids
For children to learn to write, they need to be able to hold and control a pencil or pen. This requires them to develop their fine motor skills (movements made using the small muscles of the hands and forearms) and there are many ways you can help them: We are currently in an alphabet activity and we love it! There’s nothing like introducing little ones early on to a fun, simple alphabet activity that can be very successful for them. This scavenger hunt was a great way to improve my toddler’s growing literacy skills.
Fun and easy alphabet activities are perfect for kids, and this letter scavenger hunt is no exception! It was a simple activity but perfect for my little one.
I took the cornmeal we used earlier for the button digging activity and poured it into a small container. I hid our letters all over the bin – the cornmeal did a great job of hiding them. It was actually really hard to see them there! Then I made a simple “answer” key: a place for my little one to identify the letters when he found them.
Using his hands as “tools”, my toddler dug and dug to find the letters of his alphabet. When he revealed one, the squeal of joy and happy face on his face was priceless. The cornmeal hid these letters so well that it was a
