dog food

clearly we need a dog food sign, otherwise how would we know what is play dog food and what is play people food?

we had to make 2 signs because one little girl who mainly speaks spanish took our first sign and put it in her book bag and refused to give it back. picking my battles (i mean, it is a sign in english she can read, and anyway, making a new sign just repeats the learning activity) we happily made a new sign. notice the pink to match the pink puppy.

one little one because so excited about doing interactive writing with me that she began using the abc chart to practice her letters- right there in the middle of free choice. "hows that?" she'd ask, after writing a p. "that one was hard"

she certainly seemed motivated in house keeping to write.

later we became drs and the children wrote out "prescription" notes for the teddy bear baby they adopted. it was endearing to watch them take turns feeding the bear the medicine, burping him (including the boy in the group) and then "re-reading" the fake drs note (a series of numbers- they wrote that one without me).

more references

Notes from Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work by Debbie Diller

Stenhouse Publishers, 2003



Page 123, How to Add Literacy to Traditional Kindergarten Centers



-simple recipes

-children's cookbooks

-a telephone book (homemade with each page featuring one child's name, a photo of the child, and the child's phone number)

-Order pads

-Message pads

-List paper for grocery lists

-toy catalogues

-newspaper

-postcards

-envelopes

-play money

-play telephone

-message board



Recommendations: Add these gradually, sit down and show kids how to use these items.

Literacy Development milestones: research

Child development milestones:
Early Writing-
36-48 months:
Children use scribbles and unconventional shapes to convey messages.
Children represent ideas and stories through pictures, dictation, and play
Children experiment with a growing variety of writing tools and materials, such as pencils, crayons, and computers.

48 months:
Children are using letter-like shapes, symbols, and letters to convey meaning.
Understand purposes for writing.
Begin to use familiar words in writing and drawing.

Print Awareness and Concepts:
36-48 months:
Children are showing a growing awarness of hte different functions of forms of print such as signs, letters, newspapers, lists, messages, and menus
Children are showing a growing interest in reading-related activities
48 months:
Children are showing an increased awareness of print concepts
Children recognize a word as a unit of print that is formed by individual letters.
Children are reading environmental print

Phonological Awareness and Alphabetic Knowledge
36-48 months:
Being to identify words that rhyme.
Show growing ability to discriminate and identify sounds.
48 months:
Identify matching sounds and produce original rhymes.
Show growing ability to hear and discriminate separate syllables in words
Show growing awareness of beginning and ending sounds of words.
Develop beginning awareness of alphabet letters.
REcognize that sounds are associated with letters of the alphabet and that they form words.
Understand that letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can e individually named.
Laugh at and create willy words while exploring phonology.

From Milestones of Child Development, Virginia's Early Childhood Development Alignment Project

notes from today

we have a little one who from day 1 has written her name backwards. every time. it's actually kind of impressive. many of our kiddos do not write their names at all, and with everything else going on in the classroom it has been hard to address the issue with her. she is also very head-strong and does not take correction lightly.
today in house-keeping i was able to do a fast mini-lesson on which way our letters go for the first time all year. it happened so naturally as she was writing her own "closed" sign (yes, we can't seem to get off of the open/closed signs). "opps! let's look at the C here on this chart. do you see which way it's going? can we make your C match this one? now, the 'l' goes here, on this side of the C. our letters always go this way." and we were back to playing.

the clipboard with blank paper has become incredible popular.

i need to get a baby doll to add to house keeping. research i did awhile ago on attachment disorders reflects that discussing how to treat a baby is a good way to discuss attachments/relationships with parents. i need to follow up on this in house keeping.

one of the little ones on my case load is using full sentences quite well in house keeping, although she is not doing it so much the rest of the day. however, another little boy on my case load continues not to use full sentences in house keeping, keeping his communication to gestures and mono-syllabic sounds to communicate. how can i encourage full sentences in house keeping?

snapshots

the beginnings of our interactive writing menu


mmmm.... don't you want to eat that soup?



our refrigerator and mirror... notes everywhere! (notice ABC chart magnetically on air-conditioning unit for easy access)

8/26/08

with thoughts from Already Ready i suggested to one of my kiddos today that we write down his recipe for soup. (mmmmm... tomato, strawberry and hot dog soup. the best). with him it was really more shared writing where i wrote down what he told me and i prompted him with his language. he actually did a great job using words like 'first, next, then, and last', which was awesome since these are words i feel like we struggle with in first grade. i wonder if we flush out these vocabulary words more during play if they will carry over to academics?

one little girl overheard and said, "awww... i wanted to do that". well, hey, why not?
so she and i worked on a menu for the cafe that was much more interactive writing. she loved it and she really engaged another friend in the group to work on the letters as well. they were having a great time taking turns listening to the sounds and writing the letters. one of the girls is on my case load and i was shocked by how verbal she was being. she was identifying the letters with children's names. (using full sentences to do this too!)

our menu is awesome... picture coming.

of the 4 friends in house keeping today two are on my caseload. while i did not work with one on any literacy activities i was able to prompt him with social skills throughout the entire play time. it was great to watch him practice those skills in a non-threatening environment. even without prompting i overheard him apologizing or using words to express his feelings.

i also noticed that the children are re-reading the signs when they first come to house keeping. they read what other children have written, check all the signs to see if they say open or closed, and make sure the signs reflect what they want to play at that moment.

hooray!

today the first thing the house keeping participants said when they arrived at the center was "where's something we can write on?"

!!!