Read the book Piggy and Dad Go Fishing by David Martin. Retell the story using props.Early Literacy Aside--Empower: You encourage dramatic play when you give your children opporutnities to retell stories with your children using things around the house. Having your children retell stories helps them remember the story and also to understand how stories work, with a beginning, a middle and an end. This will help them later in school when they will write their own stories and to understand stories they will read.
Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester
As you read the book, ask the children to identify the animals in the book. Talk about the landscape in the pictures--where in the world might this take place? Use words the children may not know (arctic, icebergs, ice floes, glaciers, etc.). Also, talk about Tacky the Penguin's personality, his uniqueness and originality, explaining words children may not know. For an activity, have children and adults draw and color a penguin however they want.Early Literacy Aside--Empower: We used lots of interesting words today with Tacky the Penquin, some were not even in the book. This helps develop your child's vocabulary. On your way home, talk about being creative and ways your child is unique, using some of the interesting words we used today and adding your own. Through talking and talking about your children's drawings there are many opportunities to expand your child's vocabulary.
Submitted by David Banker, Radford (VA) Public Library
Old MacDonald Had a Farm Song
Early Literacy Aside--Explain: Songs are a great way to incorporate the early literacy skill, phonological awareness. Hearing and learning animal sounds helps your children hear the smaller sounds in words and singing emphasizes different syllables. This helps your children later to sound out words.
Submitted by Wendy B. Rancier, Roanoke County (VA) Public Library
Old MacDonald Has a Farm Song
Early Literacy Aside--Explain: Researchers have found that one of the early literacy skills is phonological awareness. This is the ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words, like rhyming, playing with syllables or parts of words, and hearing beginning sounds of words. The beginning of this skills starts with children hearing and saying the sounds of animals.Sometime durng storytime sing "Old MacDonald" with the children, including several animals--cow, pig, sheep, chicken, duck, etc. Early Literacy Aside--Example: Making the sounds of animals contributes to phonological awareness and hearing sounds in words. Early Literacy Aside--Empower: Take advantage of opportunities to sing and say the sounds of animals with your children. It's fun and it also helps them hear the smaller sounds in words.
Submitted by Kimberly Burnette-Dean, Roanoke County (VA) Public Library
Snap! by Marcia Vaughan
Read the book Snap! by Marcia Vaughan.Early Literacy Aside--Example: This book lends itself to retelling events which helps your child understand the story. Encourage your child with questons that leave room for them to describe what they hear or see. I used questions like, "What did Joey do when his Mom fell asleep?" and "Who did he meet?"
Early Literacy Aside--Empower: The ability to retell a story is an important skill for children to have in order to understand what they are reading. Predicting what happens next and acting it out, or as it's usually called, pretend playing, is a fun way to retell a story and to gain background knowldge along the way.
Submitted by Donna Hackman, Bedford (VA) Public Library and Justin Azevedo, Sacramento (CA) Public Library
Row Your Boat
During several consecutive storytimes you would choose a song to sing every time. For example, I chose Row Your Boat.In each storytime we sing the song correctly:
Row, row, row your boat; gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream.
Then we sing the song again in a silly way, changing the first sound of each word:
Bow, bow, bow, bour boat, bently, bown be bream
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily; bife bis but ba bream.
Then we sing it again correctly.
Early Literacy Aside--Example: Singing nonsense songs like this help children hear the smaller sounds in words, in a fun way! Try it with different songs. Being able to change the first sound in a word is part of phonological awareness.
The next week when we sing Row Your Boat changing the first sound of each word to a different sound. For example: Low, low, low lour loat; lently lown le leam Lerrily, lerrily, lerrily, lerrily; life lis lut la leam. Sometimes the children like to make their own changes and sing to the group.