Encouraging Language and Literacy from the Dollar Store

ACTIVITY 1: TACTILE LETTERS

Give your child the opportunity to write/make letters in various media: Use your finger to write in: shaving cream, salt,

paint, pudding Make letters from: playdough, pipe cleaners,

wooden/plastic blocks Use masking tape to make a large (4 foot) letter on the floor. Let

your child: walk it, hop it, crawl it, drive a small car on it. Cut out or write a letter on construction paper. Let your child glue

items onto the letter that start with that letter-sound: buttons or beads on “B”, noodles or netting on “N”, cotton balls or candy on “C”.

ACTIVITY 2: LETTER DETECTIVE

Give your child a magnifying glass to look for letters around the house. Tell him he is a letter detective. Pick just one letter each time to “hunt down”.

ACTIVITY 3: EYE SPYGive your child a pair of silly glasses … sunglasses, broken frames without the lens. Look around your home for letters and words, big or small, black & white or coloured, on paper or plastic or cardboard.

ACTIVITY 4: BURIED LETTERSFill a dishpan half full of sand. Bury some plastic letters in the sand. Your child can dig for them and name them

as they are discovered. Your child can dig for “the letter of the week”

or “the letters in his/her name”.

ACTIVITY 5: CATCH A LETTERFill a dishpan half full of water. Add plastic or sponge letters. Give your child a small fishnet to catch and name the letters.

ACTIVITY 6: FISHING FOR LETTERSMake a fishing pole from a stick, string and donut-style magnet. Tie the stick to one end of the string and the magnet to the other end of the string.Cut fish shapes from construction paper and write a letter on each one. Let your child decorate the fish. Put a paper clip on the fish where the mouth would be. Spread the fish on the floor. Let your child dangle the magnet above the paper clips and “catch a letter”.

ACTIVITY 7: LETTER SORTINGGive your child a handful of plastic letters. Talk about their shapes. Sort into: letters with straight lines, slanted lines, curved lines, circles, tails, humps.

ACTIVITY 8: ALPHABET HOKEY POKEY

Write a letter on several index cards (2” x 3” card stock). Spread the cards on the floor. Call out a letter. Sing the Hokey Pokey song but substitute the name of the letter for body parts. E.g., “You put the M in, You put the M out, You put the M in and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about!”

ACTIVITY 9: WIGGLE WORMSWrite the words “Wiggle Worms” on a paper lunch bag or an old gift bag. Use the index cards from Activity 8 (letter cards). Add some extra index cards that have big worms drawn on them. Your child closes his/her eyes , reaches into the bag, and pulls out a card. If it is a letter, your child names it. If it is a worm, he/she screams “wiggle worm” and you both wiggle.

ACTIVITY 10: POINTERSUse something other than a finger to point to letters and words: a home-made magic wand, a wooden spoon, a piece of uncooked spaghetti, coffee stir stix with tip dipped in glue then glitter,

ACTIVITY 11: HIGHLIGHT IT!

Use a highlighter pen to highlight the “letter of the week” or “all the upper case/capital letters” in a store flyer or old newspaper.

ACTIVITY 12: BEAN BAG TOSS

Use a marker to write letters - in random order - on a shower curtain. Place the curtain on the floor. Your child tosses the bean bag onto the shower curtain and names the letter that it lands on. For a challenge, your child can first name a letter and then aim for that letter.

ACTIVITY 13: ENVIRONMENTAL PRINT

Environmental print is the print we recognize from the colours, pictures and shapes that surround it. This is usually the first type of text that a child recognizes. It includes store/restaurant logos, traffic signs and labels on food packaging. Cut out logos from magazines and store flyers. Play matching games with the logos. Glue the logos into home-made books (i.e., a few pieces of paper

stapled together). Title them “My Favourite Places to Eat”, “My Favourite Cereals”, “My Toy Wish-List”.

Make an “I Can Read So Many Things” book. E.g., “I can read .” “I can read .”

ACTIVITY 14: SHAKE IT

Fill camera film canisters with a variety of noise-making materials (beans, rice, paper clips, & marbles). Place these same items on separate napkins. Your child shakes

each container, listens for the sounds, and matches the container to the item on the napkins.

Your child can fill another set of canisters with the same set of materials and match the sounds of the containers.

ACTIVITY 15: THUMBS UP Find a colouring book or inexpensive book with lots of rhyming pictures. Glue two pictures on an index card. Some of the cards can have rhyming pictures and some can have non-rhyming pictures. Show them to your child and say the two words. If the words rhyme your child puts his/her thumbs up. If the words do not rhyme, your child puts his/her thumbs down.

ACTIVITY 16: RHYMING BASKET

Find a variety of objects that rhyme (toy car/star, small box/socks, chicken bone/toy phone, rock/sock, dime/lime, plastic cat/hat). Place all the objects in the basket. Your child chooses one object from the basket, says the name and then searches for the other object that rhymes.

ACTIVITY 17: ALLITERATION ANIMALS

Choose a small stuffed animal and give it a name to match its beginning sound (e.g. Penny Pig, Karen Kitty, Danny Dog). Help your child make up a story using words that begin with the same sound as the animal. E.g., “Penny Pig went to the pizza parlour. She popped ten pepperoni pizzas into her pocket. She also picked some popcorn and pickles to go on top. “

ACTIVITY 18: SOUND SURPRISE

Put several objects that begin with the same sound in a “Surprise Bag” (i.e., a cloth bag, opaque plastic bag, old gift bag that he/she can’t see into). Your child takes an item out of the bag and names it. Your child says the sound that the item starts with.

Activity 19: MARACA MUSIC

Use plastic maracas or home-styled sound makers. Glue two pictures onto an index card. Some cards will have pictures that begin with the same sound (bridge & ball, kite & kangaroo); some will have pictures that begin with different sounds (money & milk). Turn the stack of cards upside down and flip them over one at a time. Your child names both pictures. If the words begin with the same sound, he/she shakes the maracas. If the words begin with two different sounds, he/she will not shake the maracas.

ACTIVITY 20: PASS THE PAIL

Put a variety of small objects in a sand pail. Your child picks out an item and names it. You clap out the syllables (or beats) in the word. Count the number of syllables:

1 Syllable 2 Syllables 3 SyllablesCoin Pen cil Sun glass esDog Ap ple Di no saurClip But ton Ba na na

ACTIVITY 21: HOW MANY WORDS?

Give your child 5 – 7 poker chips, small tokens, or blocks. Look at picture scenes from a book and use short sentences to describe them (e.g., The cat is chasing a butterfly; She drinks juice). Your child repeats the sentences while touching each token as he/she says each word.

ACTIVITY 22: MYSTERY BROKEN-WORD ANIMALS

Put several plastic animals into a bag without your child seeing them. Your child will listen carefully for the mystery word. Name one of the animals in the bag, stretching out the sounds (or saying them as if you were reading the written word. E.g., “cat”: /k – a – t/, “duck”: /d – u – ck/)

Your child must guess what the word is by blending the sounds together in his/her head. After your child guesses, pull out the animal and review how to say it as a whole word and as a broken word.

ACTIVITY 23: WRITING OFFICE

Kids love to have an “office” to work in. You can set up a simple one that has different types of things to write on and write with. Things to write on: different types of paper

– wrapping paper, cellophane paper, old greeting cards, store receipts, post-it notes, clipboards, mini blackboards, forms.

Things to write with: markers, pens, pencils, crayons, chalk, squiggle pens.

Accessories: envelopes, tape, ruler, hole punch, scissors, junk mail, catalogues.

ACTIVITY 24: JOURNAL WRITING

Purchase a special notebook/folder just for writing about special experiences and feelings. Put your child’s name on the front. Help your child keep track of special events by glueing remnants of that event and “writing” a few words about it.

Remnants include things like: paper napkin with logo from favourite restaurant, ticket stub from sports game or movie theatre, wrapper from gum or candy.

ACTIVITY 25: MESSAGE BOARD

Provide a dry erase board fro your child to leave family members important messages. Encourage him/her to read aloud the messages he/she has left.

ACTIVITY 26: WORDS ON A RING

As your child begins to write… When your child asks how to spell a word, print the word on a 3x5”

index card. Your child may draw or paste a picture of the word to illustrate its

meaning. Cards can be placed on a metal ring or keychain once they have

been hole- punched. They can be carried in the bus or car for spelling review.

Your child can refer to these cards when he/she needs them to spell a word.

ACTIVITY 27: MAKING BOOKS

Baggie Book: Cut construction paper into squares the size of the baggie. Staple them together to make a booklet. Your child draws pictures on each page and dictates a sentence

about each picture. Put the book into a baggie for travelling.

“Lift the Flap” Book: Take 4-6 brown paper lunch sacks and fold over the bottom of each. Draw a picture on the bottom, hidden under the flap. Write the matching word above the flap. Staple the paper bags together along the top (above the words) so

that the book opens from the bottom. Your child can guess the word, and then lift the flap to check if they

are right.

“Tag Along” Story Book: Stack several sheets of paper together, fold them in half and staple

to form a booklet. Your child draws and “writes” a story (or dictates to you a story). Your child makes a front cover page with a title and a back cover

page with “about the author” (just like a real story book). Punch two holes to make a handle using a pipe cleaner. The book

can “tag along” when you make long or short trips where there is a lot of waiting.

References Beeler, Teri. 1993. I Can Read! Creating a Print-Rich Environment. Cypress, CA: Creative Teaching Press, Inc.

International Reading Association, www.reading.org

Morrow, Lesley Mandel. 2001. Literacy Development in the Early Years: Helping Children Read and Write. Boston, Allyn and Bacon.

National Research Council. 1999. Starting Out Right, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Neuman, Copple, Bredekamp. 2000. Learning to Read and Write Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children. Washington, D.C.:NAEYC.

Preschool Early Language and Literacy Training, Health Science Centre at Houston, 2001.

Schickendanz, Juditrh. 1999. Much More Than the ABC’s: The Early Stages of Reading and Writing. Washington, D.C., NAEYC.

Strickland, Dorothy and Morrow, Lesley. 2000. Emerging Literacy: Young Children Learn to Read and Write. Newark, Delaware: IRA.

The Upper Grand District School Board, Guelph, Ontario. 1995. Making the Speech-Print Connection.

U.S. Department of Education: www.ed.gov