tidying up the house

With a title like, "Tidying Up the House," I should be talking about my own house... but I'm referring to one of my literacy centers. With a request from Shona this summer, I am finally getting around to sharing this center with you! She read learningplaying and wanted to know more! If you haven't read that post (or other literacy center posts) yet, I'd recommend it as a place to start.

Our house center is represented by this simple icon:

And students have a choice of what activities they want to do at this center. We are on week 4 of school and are learning a third choice. Students grow with each of these activities and really are just pretending right now, but grow into really reading and writing for specific purposes, which is what we do everyday, right? That's why this center is really labeled the "using everyday literacy" center to me.. and any administrator that walks into my classroom.

Our house center has the shelves and cupboards labeled with the poster icons so that activities can be easily found and put away, come clean up time.

I wish I could tell you what the favorite activities are, but they change each year with different groups and different kinders. Generally this center focuses on short amounts of writing like lists, compilations or important things. Here are some examples of the activities kinders can choose from.

I run off copies of old calendars and bind them together so student can use them to "schedule" play dates, ice cream, soccer games, birthdays... etc.

Students will read to babies and write down the baby's opinion of the story. These resemble our reading logs that students have in their own folders - so they enjoy pretending to be the grown up. Board books that feature color words, nursery rhymes, finger plays makes some of these books "readable" right away. We store all of our books in a diaper bag - making for easy clean up.

 

{click to download baby book logs}

Like how the babies are being held while these kinders are doing the all-important writing? Talk about focusing on your work. Ha! Students can use today's technology in pretend form and email. Simple construction paper makes for a nifty laminated laptop.

{click to download laptop screens and keyboard}

They can play "the cookie game" (really creative name, right?) and they flip sight words and get to keep the cookies if they can read them. If they flip the cookie with the star or "CRUNCH" word, then all of their cookies go back into the pan. We also have oven mitts they like to wear when playing this game.

Students grow from copying a few letters to reading and writing with purpose to create their own shopping lists. 

We keep lots of DK books that feature simple picture to word labels for this purpose. Often, books like you can find at a garage sale, or "My First Words" types of books are wonderful for kinders to use as a reading resource.

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I've also used photo cards from old preschool and K health and social studies programs (like giant flashcards if you will) and simply slid them into a cheapy photo album to create a simple book. (It was one of those items I gained from an "inherited" room) that I printed word labels to stick on each and that resource is on its 8th year and still in great shape. 

This activity has evolved over the years and I'm connecting the first two activities together - writing in a calendar and using the telephone. We created a class book of our phone numbers as our version of environmental print (and I even made a few for local shops in the area). We have a few phones and cell phones (which are the most popular to use) that students use. I model using the telephone book to find the number you need, writing someone's name to create a "playdate" to go get ice cream, play soccer, etc. and tie it into using the calendar.

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After we start our year off with Who Took the Cookie, we move right into a theme of Peanut Butter and Jelly. I like to capture their little kinder hearts with food. We write a recipe together and then make sandwiches to kick off why writers write. Then, they create recipe books together at home with the child's favorite recipe as the main attraction and can make it as creative as they want for the project.

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The books that feature glued-in macaroni or photographs of the kinders actually making the food are always the biggest hit! We read a couple a day after they come back and I laminate the front covers. These then become a staple go-to set of books that they love reading again and again. I created a writing piece to accompany it, but most often, they just love to read the books.

If you enjoyed these literacy center posts, please consider a little "like," or swinging by our shop to mark us as one of your favorites!