Literacy Activities and Kits

Literacy involves many skills referred to as the Big Ideas. The Big Ideas are phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. There are endless ways to develop such skills for any child. Activities from listening, to gluing, cooking, playing, and painting can all promote literacy skills. Some schools and libraries have Literacy Kits for students that coincide to a book. Websites are available that offer free materials and activities connected to books that promote literacy for children. Finally, there are many different strategies that can be used as you read to your child to increase literacy. See the Process Section and the Answer on this website called ‘Joint Book Reading’ for some of these strategies.

Literacy activities and kits promote the Big Ideas of phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. Numerous strategies while reading can also be used to increase literacy.

• Child's Age: 0-2, 3-5, 6-10, 11-13
• Planning Effort: Moderate
• Difficulty Level: Easy

books and materials for kits

1. Select a book your children or students may enjoy.

 

2. Find activities and materials you think your child will enjoy. Some examples of this include:

•           using magnetic letters to make a word from a book
•           gluing coconuts on a coconut tree for the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
•           searching in a visual tube for letters to relate to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
•           following a picture recipe for a story as ‘Stone Soup’
•           hearing your voice with a ‘toobaloo’ as you learn and say a new vocabulary word

 

3. Strategies to use as you read aloud that promote literacy include:

•           reading the story often
•           moving your finger as you read left to right
•           stop reading at the end of a sentence and allow your child to supply the end word
•           help your child ‘predict’ by asking what comes next
•           draw a ‘popcorn’ shape around some sight words and have your child read the ‘popcorn’ words (a name for sight words because they ‘pop’ off the page.