I have been a preschool teacher for 8 years and I have a three year old son. Each week I will share an idea with you that I have used at school and/or at home. Learning can be fun for preschoolers and it’s important that they learn to love learning at a young age! Check out this week’s idea:
Preschool Project of the Week – Integrate Spelling into your day-to-day routine
Preschool Skills: letter recognition, sight words, understanding that letters work together to “build”
words.
In the preschool classroom, we have words everywhere. Names on cubbies, chairs, pencil boxes. Number and color words on the wall. And you would expect that in a classroom. Bug took a huge interest in letters and spelling before his third birthday. It started with learning to spell his name (which he mastered right around 2 years old) and then he spent the next several months learning to recognize the entire alphabet. Then we discovered the show Super Why! on Netflix (comes on PBS) and it all snowballed from there.
So here’s how we started learning to spell words! I used sentence strips for labeling (I’ve found these at the Dollar Tree before!)
Ideas:
- Start small. Just label a few simple things. And stick to three to four letter words to begin with.
- Pick some of your child’s favorite things to label – I put the word “train” on Bug’s train table. He loved it!
- Start with words for tangible items (like “door”) and then later introduce words for concepts and actions (“out” and “eat”).
- Make a game out of it – When you sit down to dinner, ask “Are we going to E-A-T or D-O-O-R?” When we’re leaving I ask Bug if we’re going to take the C-A-R or the V-A-N. You can also say things like “Go get your S-H-O-E. Just make sure you’ve introduced the word somewhere in the house before you work it into your games. That way, if they are unsure, they can find the labeled item. For example, if E-A-T is on the table, then it will help them answer your dinner time question.
- Get creative – I taped “down” on the stairs going down the garage and I taped “up” on the ceiling above Bug’s bed!
- Keep it fresh – once they’ve mastered (or appear to be bored) with the current words, take them down and put up new ones. I don’t tell Bug when I’ve put up new words. I let him “discover” them!
Looking for more preschool letter activities? Check out the Alphabet Book!
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