The Literacy Connection Calendar for Preschoolers
This calendar offers activities for parents and young children (ages 3 to 5) to do together. Each activity helps your child build one or more important literacy skills. The most important part of reading, talking and playing with your child is having fun so that your child discovers a love of learning that will last a lifetime.
These activities don't require a lot of time or any special materials. Many of them can be done as you and your child go about your daily routine.
Here are the literacy skills that are used in these activities. There is an icon (image) associated with each literacy skill for easy reference on the calendar.
Oral Language—Talk, Talk, Talk! Oral language refers to speaking and listening, but there's more to it than that! Children need oral language skills to express their needs and ideas (speaking) and to understand new information being shared (listening). In other words, oral language is an important building block for nearly all other communication, including reading and writing.
Phonological Awareness—The Sounds of Language. Being able to hear and play with the different parts of spoken words is a skill children need as they begin to learn to read. As children start to recognize the sounds that make up words—for example, beginning sounds and ending sounds—they learn that words are made up of smaller sounds. They also learn that by changing these sounds, they can create new words.
Print Awareness—How Books Work. Children learning to read need to make connections between the words they hear and the words they see in print. As children begin to explore all types of printed materials (like books, magazines and signs), they begin to see that pictures and written words represent real things.
Alphabet Knowledge—More than ABCs. It's important that children learn the names of the letters of the alphabet and, ultimately, the sounds that the letters represent. As children begin to make the connection between letters and sounds, they also begin to see that letters work together to form words—including their own name!
Early Writing—Write, Write, Write! Early writing is connected to reading success. Scribbling, drawing and pretending to write are the first steps. Children may also use invented spelling—getting some but not all of the letters correct or leaving out letters—as they begin to make the important connection between the sounds of language and the letters of the alphabet. Children work toward being able to write alphabet letters on request or writing their own name.
One of the activities contains an interactive online element. All activities are provided in PDF format for downloading and printing for future use.
Note: To view and print the interactive online element and the PDF file you will need to have Macromedia Flash Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader loaded on your computer. These are free downloads and should only take a few minutes. Make sure to read all of the installation instructions before beginning each download.
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Click on a date in the calendar for that day's activity.
Click here to download and print all of the activities.
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This information was produced by the National Center for Family Literacy for use on www.thinkfinity.org, a powerful educational platform supported by the Verizon Foundation. This information may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes without permission.
Copyright © 2007 by the National Center for Family Literacy. Produced by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) (325 W. Main Street, Suite 300, Louisville , Kentucky 40202-4237).
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