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.