"Come on Nate, let's make our story.” These are photos of Avery and Nate playing and exploring with shapes on a felt board. It was made and given to us by Crafting Community at the Oh Joy! for Nod launch party we went to earlier this month. "It's cotton candy wearing a bow,” described Avery (about the third photo from the top). Thanks to Crafting Community for a great tool for play and creativity!
A recent house that Avery built for Totoro, with a handle on the top for carrying around.
The team at Lately Lily have outdone themselves with this beautiful and bright set of alphabet flash cards! Illustrated by Micah Player, these engaging cards take you along on Lily’s travels and jaunts and make practicing the alphabet and letter sounds fun. Avery’s favorite illustrations are the ones of the hotel, airplane, keys, and the train.
One very important early literacy skill is knowing letter-sound correspondence, or what sound each letter of the alphabet makes. One creative way to do this is to take a suitcase, label it with a letter of the alphabet (a different letter each week), and fill it with objects that begin with that letter. As you put the objects in the suitcase, you can talk about each one with your child, saying the name of the object and asking them if it begins with the letter of the week (in this case, the letter “T.”) Emphasizing the first sound of the word, “t,” is helpful if your child needs that cue. To make it more challenging, you can set out other objects that don’t start with the letter of the week and have your child identify which objects start with the letter of the week (belonging in the suitcase) and which don’t. Throughout the week, you can ask your child to find other objects to put in the suitcase that begin with the letter of the week. It’s helpful to review the names of the objects and the letter of the week a few times throughout the week.
The terrific book Alphablock is a perfect companion to this activity. It’s good for young children to experience letters in different ways, using different senses, and Alphablock provides just that. The die-cut letters in the book are fun and children can get a sense of the shape of a letter and can run their fingers along the edge of each letter.
Additional activities you can do are drawing pictures of the objects, writing the names of the objects together or creating and telling a story about the objects. All those activities support literacy. The possibilities are endless. Have fun with it!
Thanks to The Land of Nod for sending us this set of suitcases and Alphablocks.
If you have an eye for good design, you’ll appreciate Frank Viva’s Along a Long Road. He uses the three primary colors along with black and white to create an intriguing and playful world. The words are few, but the bold and modern illustrations play a huge part in the book’s narrative, capturing you and drawing you onto the rider’s road. The bright yellow road takes the rider through countryside and towns and leaves you wondering where his next destination is. Follow that road!