Literacy Corner…January 2014

An activity to support the development of language, literacy and numeracy skills

Using any of your favourite stories, you can substitute the children’s names for characters in the book. 
Help the children to draw the story, using their photos where possible to enable them see their position in the story.  

What is good about this activity and how it links with Aistear  

• Children become engaged in a discussion where they themselves are key players and they love to share these stories with their parents and other adults (Communication; Well-being).

• They develop a positive relationship with books (Communication; Exploring and Thinking).

• Provides opportunities to talk about the parts of a book and how we use them; how we open them a certain way, how we turn the page, read from left to right (Communication; Exploring and thinking)

• An activity like this provides many opportunities for the adult to engage the child in numeracy activities e.g. how many pigs – lets count them etc. (Communication; Exploring and Thinking).

Online Storybooks

There are various apps and websites that also help you to create a storybook online with the children such as storykit and many of these are free. See this apps for digital storytelling webpage.

Literacy Corner Expression of Interest

Would you like to be profiled in our Literacy Corner for an activity or idea that promotes literacy in your service?
Then please email kjohnson@earlychildhoodireland.ie

December Book Competition:How do you encourage children to play outside in winter?

Congratulations to last months winners – Crossroads and Killygordon Community  Playgroup and Bluebells Play-school!

Crossroads and Killygordon Community  Playgroup

How do you encourage children to play outside in winter?: We have woods beside our playgroup and when we were doing our story on Bears /Bear hunt/Three Bears we used these woods to hide the bears up the trees, to encourage the children to go into the woods and explore them.    They went looking for the bears, we collected all sorts from the woods and used them in junk art.  We also had story of Jack and Beanstalk and used stepladders of different sizes to climb up trees to find Jacks Beanstalk . This month we even collected branches leaves etc to make our Christmas tree which we decorated and planted into a pot and displayed it in the hall for all parents to see.

Bluebells Play-school    

How do you encourage children to play outside in winter? We have 2 hens and we need to take care of them, whatever the weather. We collect the eggs and most o bviously we have to feed them and give them water. The hens live in a rabbit hutch type of hen house which is situated in the garden. We have the added bonus of having eggs most days. We have a local fox at the moment who seems determined to dig into get the hens…. so the story is on going. My husband is doing his best to protect them!