Date : December 19, 2019
Literacy skills are among the most important things your children can develop – and it’s important to continue to develop these skills through fun literacy activities these school holidays, to ensure your preschooler is ready for big school! Making learning fun and engaging is the key to effective literacy activities for preschoolers. For ideas on how to prepare your preschooler and their literacy skills for big school, read on!
Literacy Activities: Out and About
Your Local Library
Every local library has story time sessions, and the summer school holidays are the perfect time to participate. Preschoolers can enjoy the stories and the songs while the librarian asks them questions about the books they’ve just listened to and what they’ve noticed in the pictures. Many libraries also have art and craft activities afterwards that are based around the stories, which encourages kids to talk about the stories and use their creativity to continue with the story.
Museums and Culture
It may seem obvious, but museums, art galleries, and other places of culture are fantastic to take your pre-schoolers to these school holidays. Museums offer interactive, tactile, three-dimensional learning opportunities that expose children to new experiences and ideas. They allow children to take ownership of their own learning, as well as develop and explore their own interests. By encouraging your child to talk about what they’ve learned and to draw or even write a story about what they saw, they’ll definitely add to their literacy skills and help prepare them for big school. What child wouldn’t love to see the dinosaurs, or explore space, or visit periods of history they’ve only seen in movies?
Shopping Centres
Shopping centres are another brilliant space for incidental literacy activities for pre-schoolers, particularly in supermarkets. Here, you can encourage dialogue with your child about common grocery items. An example might be to ask them where they think milk might come from, or how vegetables might make it to the supermarket. You can also talk about technologies in use at the shopping centre. From there, your child can tell stories about the journey these products make, or how people feel when they bring the product home. Encourage your child to use their imaginations!
Literacy Activities: At Home
Reading routine
If it isn’t already, reading needs to be part of your child’s everyday routine. Preschoolers that read for just 30 minutes a day are exposed to thousands of words per year, which only increases their literacy abilities. They’ll be ready for big school in no time. Encourage them to choose their own stories, and revisit favourite authors. If they see reading as a fun activity, it won’t seem like work.
Boredom is learning
It might seem counter-intuitive, but let your pre-schooler manage their own boredom. If they have access to paper, crayons, and other art and crafty things, they can use their imaginations to keep themselves occupied. Your child can create their own stories through drawing, building, or storytelling through play.
Envelop your home with words
You can help your pre-schooler develop familiarity with words by enveloping your home with them. There are so many ways you can do this – through encouraging your child to help you write your shopping lists, to encouraging them to make an alphabet poster with cut out pictures and their own writing. Check out this great article for more in depth ideas!
Discussion
This is key for developing literacy skills with children of any age, but pre-schoolers are particularly curious about the world. Whether watching TV or simply playing in the back yard, encourage a discussion with your child about things they are interested in. Ask them to explain why they like certain activities, toys, animals or flowers. Their answers will surprise and delight you.
