This month at RisingOaks Early Learning | Saint John Paul II, School-age 1 has shown great interest in literacy. As they engage in play with peers, they have pulled their knowledge from what they have learned in school, at home, and during play to continue to build their literacy skills. This interest has slowly grown over the past few days, starting with the children writing their names and peers names at the creative table, and as they play with the drawing boards to make tables and lists. This expanded into the children wanting to write different words of interest and construct sentences to go along with the pictures they draw. The children would ask their friends or the educators how to spell words, and together we would figure out how to spell them. We used the resources in the classroom such as the words found around the classroom, the letter wall, as well as used letter sounds and actions to figure out which letter came next in the word they were trying to write. We also created opportunities for the children to continue this learning by playing games such as our sight words fishing game where they used fishing rods to find sight words in a bucket of fish and then say the words out loud. Aeddan used his letter sounds and actions during this game to figure out the word “because”. Making each letter sound he could see in the word and patting out the sound on his arm he put the sounds together and after trying 3 times figured out the word. To expend their learning, we also played the game “Kaboom!” where the children picked alphabet labelled popsicle sticks and said a word that started with the letter picked. The children were excited to play this game raising their hands high and shouting out words as their peers went up to pick a stick. They also supported their peers by helping them out with words when stuck, showing their teamwork and belonging with each other. The children also played a letter finding game, which had the children matching lower- and upper-case letters together. Each child found one letter and matched it with the corresponding letter, before everyone together found the remaining letters. After playing these 2 games, the children took the lead with their peers to play the games themselves. They would choose a leader and they would direct the game. Together, they continued to explore letters and words.
