Make these simple crafts with your child and use them to help your child get ready to read! Most of these activities are listed on the Play, Grow, Read section of the KDL website.
Crafts for Print Awareness (Print Awareness is knowing that letters and words are everywhere and that words have meaning and a purpose.)
· Use food pictures from ads or old magazines to create play restaurant menus. Write the name of the food next to the picture. Use your menus to play restaurant.
· Decorate an old tissue box and create a mailbox for your child. Help your child write letters to family members and put them in the mailbox.
· Save your cereal boxes, cut off the front sides of the box, and create a "cereal book" for your child to read. Children learn to recognize words in familiar logos before other words.
Crafts for Phonological Awareness (Phonological Awareness is being able to recognize and play with the smaller sounds in words.)
· Make a rhyming matching game using the template on the KDL website or create your own cards by cutting out sets of rhyming pictures. Instead of matching identical pictures, your child will match rhyming sets like "hat" and "cat."
· Print off a "Say it Fast, Say it Slow" craft template from the KDL website. This game takes a familiar word/picture and divides the word into syllables. Move the word/picture all together and say the word fast. Spread out the word/picture and say the word slowly, emphasizing all of the sounds.
Crafts for Vocabulary
· Take a nature walk with your child and collect natural objects like sticks, pebbles, leaves, etc. Make your own Nature Baggie Book by gluing the objects to cardstock paper and labeling them. Try to use descriptive words that your child might not be familiar with in the descriptions. Put the cardstock sheets into sandwich baggies and tape the baggies together to finish the book.
Crafts for Narrative Skills (Narrative Skills are the ability to re-tell a story and to recognize that stories have a beginning, middle, and end.)
· Create story puppets for a familiar story like The Three Little Pigs or The Three Bears. Craft sticks are great to use for this. Tell the story to your child, and then have him or her re-tell the story using the puppets.
· Create life cycle cards with your child. Using old magazines or clip art on a computer, get pictures of familiar life cycles (for example: seed, plant, blossoming flower or baby, child, adult). Glue the pictures on to pieces of cardstock. Have your child put the cards in order and then "tell the story" of the cards.
Crafts for Letter Knowledge (Letter Knowledge is knowing the names and sounds of letters).
· Make a name necklace with your child. Write each letter of your child's name on separate pieces of cardstock. Look through grocery ads and old newspapers and magazines for the letters and pictures of things that start with the letters. Glue these clippings on the appropriate pages. When the pages dry, punch a hole in them and put a piece of yarn through the hole.
· Go on a walk with your child and bring your camera. Every time your child finds a letter (on signs, license plates, or in nature) take a picture of it. Print out the pictures and turn them into an alphabet book.
In your voice
