Activities to Develop Literacy Skills for
4 to 5 year olds
_________________________

Best Practices | Language Development | Literacy Activities | Reading Aloud to Children
Letter Knowledge | Phonological Awareness | Written Expression

Best Practices
Create a community within our family by using words like "we" instead of "I", "us" instead of "them", "ours" instead of "mine".

Setting expectations (rules) for your home. Children need to see that it is their social responsibility to follow expectations at home as well as at school in order not to infringe on the rights of others.

•  Parent explains the meaning of a expectation.
•  Parent asks the children "Tell me some expectations that you think will make our home work better."
•  Children brainstorm response.
•  Parent writes them down.
•  Children often brainstorm expectations in the negative. (don't hit, don't yell, don't run etc.)
•  Parent guides the children to put rules in the positive (we walk, we listen, we use out/ inside voices, we respect each other, we respect out community.)
•  Parent writes the rules on a poster board and places an icon next to it.
•  Limit expectations to four to five positive statements
•  Now make sure your follow through. Be consistent

Helper Chart
Young children want to be helpers. In order to encourage this behavior, parents need to model this in the home. ("Would you like some Help?" "I could really use some help with this." Helper Charts provide opportunities to using meaningful print.

•  Parent says. "I need some help getting things done. Let's think about some jobs that you could do to help."
•  Children brainstorm jobs.
•  Parent and child make a job or helper chart listing the job and a picture icon. Two to Three jobs per day is plenty to begin with.

Back to top

_________________________

Language Development
Children learn language as they interact with responsive adults and peers and experience language use in meaningful contexts.

Tips

• Listen for different purposes
• Use language for a variety of purposes
• Use sentences of increasing length and grammatical complexity
• Use new vocabulary in everyday communication
• Refine and extend understanding of known words
• Extend conversation
• Enrich vocabulary

Back to top

_________________________

Literacy Activities
Children learn language, writing, and reading skills together, Each of these skills are interlinked and work together to support the other. For example if a child has heard a word and used it in a sentence, and knows what means. That child will have a better chance of being able to reading and remembering the word once they see the word in print for the first time.

Activity 1- Wordless Picture Book

Materials:
Collect picture or photo of family events such as birthdays, vacations, new pets, etc. or collect photo from magazine or children's drawings.

Procedure:

• Have the child choose a picture or use his personal drawings.
• Build on what the child says by using scaffolding questions to help extend his language.

Ex: Who/what is in the picture?
What is happening here?
Have you ever. . ?
What do you think would happen if. . . ?

______________________

Activity 2- Story Retell
The dramatization and acting out of stories help to build children's vocabulary and increases their comprehension.

Materials

• Book
• Felt board
• Puppets
• Story props, etc.

Procedure

• Parent reads the story.
• Parent models the retelling of the story with the materials.
• Parent guides children in retelling the story.
• Children retell the story independently.

______________________

Activity 3- What's in the Bag?

Materials
Place in the bag items that the child may to know the name of; kitchen utensils, construction tools, etc.

Procedure

• One child chooses an item from the bag names the item and tells what he knows about the object.
• Parent builds on the child's description by scaffolding

Ex. What is this?
What do you use it for?
Have you ever used one?

Back to top

_________________________

Reading Aloud to Children

• Promotes curiosity
• Broadens knowledge about the world
• Develops vocabulary
• Builds listening comprehension
• Leads to independent reading
• Inspires writing

Activity 1- Sound Effects
Using musical instruments to create sound effects for characters and sounds in the story actively interactively engages children into the story. The parent may assign instruments to the characters or events and on other occasions, allow children to make those choices.

With the story, The Napping House by Audrey Woods, use a rain stick or hand rubbing together upon turning each page. Use a plastic baggie filled with various pieces of paper to create the sounds of the bed rustling. The children may snore to represent the granny, the napping child, and an instrument like the triangle to represent the mouse.

With the book, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, students use blocks to make the shoes clamp, party whistle for the pants that wiggle, maracas for the shirt the shakes, etc.

Back to top

_________________________

Letter Knowledge
Research shows that alphabet knowledge is one of the best predictors of success in first grade reading. The question is not should we teach the alphabet but how should we teach the alphabet.

The best way to teach the alphabet to children is through their name. After all what is more meaningful to any of us than our name. Begin with the child first name then moving on to middle and last name. If they already know this move on to family members and friends. Here are some fun ways:

Activity 1- Name Cheer

Materials:

• Child's name on a sentence strip (first letter Upper
• Case/remaining letters lower case)
• Use a Set of Large letters (First letter upper case/remaining letters lower case.)
• One set of cheerleader pom poms
• One small megaphone

Procedure

• Show child's name card.
• Using the name card discuss the first letter and sound of the child's name.
• Using the name card count the letters in the child's name.
• Give the child a large set of letters in his name.
• Ask the child to pass them out to his family members
• The parent assists the children in lining up in left to right order holding the larger set of letter cards in front of them.
• The child keeps the pom poms.
• Parent calls out with enthusiasm the first letter of the child's name into the megaphone "Give me a K"
• Child with the letter K holds it up high and class yells out "K".
• The parent continues with each letter of the child's name.
• Parent shouts out, "What does that Spell?
• Children say, the name of the child e.g. "Kyron"
• Children with the pom poms cheers, say "Yeah!"

Back to top

_________________________

Phonological Awareness
These activities promote the following skills:

• To exercise the children's ability to overcome distractions, pronunciation differences, and so on, while listening to language.
• To allow children to explore their listening powers and to practice focusing their attention on particular sounds of interest.
• To sharpen children's ability to attend to selective sounds.
• To listen for a particular sound and to pair it with its source.

 

Activity 1- Do you Hear What I Hear?
Introduce children to the art of listening. Ask questions such as, "How do we listen?" and "What do we use when we listen?" Have children close their eyes and sit very quietly to listen to sounds. Discuss what sounds everyone heard.

______________________

Activity 2 Find the Sound
Ask the child to cover their eyes. While eyes are covered, hide a ticking clock or timer, the child uncovers their eyes and try to find the ticking clock by listening. As the children's listening skill develop, the clock may be hidden in increasingly difficult places.

 

Back to top

_________________________

Written Expression
Children begins to understand that print carries meaning and that there is a difference between drawing and writing. With guidance and practice, children's writing more closely approximates conventional writing. Researchers agree that children go through certain developmental stages of writing but these stages are not necessarily well defined or sequential.

Children use: drawing, scribbles, letter-like forms, letter strings, invented spelling, conventional spelling.

 

Activity 1- Take on the Go Writing Center

• Parents creates a mini-writing center for children to use at home, in the car, while waiting for the doctor offices etc.
• Be creative included makers, crayons, colored pencils, various sized paper, envelopes.

 

Back to top

Ideas adapted from the National Head Start S.T.E.P Training Manual by UT Health Science Center at Houston