Literacy Development - It's Everywhere!

A question a lot of people want to know... If the children in your program play all day, how are they going to learn their ABC's and 123's?  In this post, let's discuss the ABC's.

Do you really know what early literacy consists of?  According to the MN Department of Education, language literacy development is made up of 4 parts;  listening, speaking, emergent reading, and emergent writing.  

Listening

Children practice listening skills in our program all day.  They listen to their friends' ideas, they listen to directions , we rhyme during storytelling, we use non-verbal and verbal cues for children (ringing the clean up bells and announcing that there a 5 minutes left until clean up time), and listening with understanding to stories and conversations.  Our play is rich with all of these things!

Speaking

We give children the time to explore their environment and get to know the people around them.  Speaking is a very large part of early literacy development.  Children need to be able to communicate their needs, wants, or thoughts with their actions, non-verbal cues, expressions and words.  Play is important for children to try out these skills.  Through play children also learn to initiate, ask questions, and respond in conversation with adults and with other children.

In the photo below, these children were working on glittering a collaborative piece of artwork.  Their conversation was rich in language, listening to each other's suggestions, giving directions and "good job" moments!  

Emergent Reading

Our environment is loaded with opportunities to explore stories, print, the alphabet, and books.  We spend time with children spontaneously reading and telling stories, allowing them time to "read" books on their own, retelling stories, telling stories with props or the flannel board and allowing them to use those props and materials freely during play time.  We have an Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly puppet and the children have so much fun telling the story over and over on their own.  They are developing a love for reading by being allowed the time to spend singing this song over and over again!

Emergent Writing

Children are given the materials to write if they choose.  Chalk, dry erase markers, crayons, markers, paint, pencils, clipboards, paper, journaling and even glue!  Children leave our program with the knowledge that writing is a way of communicating.  They know the use of scribbles, shapes, pictures and dictation represents their thought and ideas.  We want children to engage in writing daily so we give them time and tools for this!  

So, you see... It's all about time and the environment.  Trust us.  Trust your child. Trust the process.  Your child will experience each of these things daily through child-led play.  

Defending Play

Our philosophy at Butterfly Hill is that of child centered play.  We build our environment and days on moments of discovery, experimentation, cooperation, problem solving, risk taking, questioning, and exploring.  This is PLAY!  Our academic driven education system has pushed down to preschool and many preschools are giving children workbooks and are forcing children to do teacher directed activities so they have something to show they are learning.  At Butterfly Hill we take a different approach to learning.  An approach that is rooted in  brain based research.  For now, we have to defend play and prove that your children are learning in our environment.  We have to prove that when we allow them to use their whole bodies to learn and make their own decisions that this is the highest form of meaningful learning your child could ever be a part of.

This photo is an example of a child making meaning of the world around her. She spent 10 minutes using her gross and fine motor skills to punch circles out of this piece of paper. She ran over to me and said, "Look!  I made an H!"  She is making connections because we give her the time, materials and environment to make connections.  We let her play!  This is pre-literacy at it's greatest!  We didn't make her sit down at a table and write the letter H over and over to learn what the letter H looks and feels like.  She experienced it on her own and the moment was meaningful to her.  Trust the brain research! 

When given time to make their own decisions, children will learn!  They will be ready for the next stage in life - when it comes.  But, for now, let's let them enjoy being 3,4 and 5.  

Your children are lucky.  They are learning.  Trust us.  Trust them.  Trust the research. Play is learning!