Keyword: Language Arts
-
Learning Literacy Through Songs and Music
This resource list provides a collection of resources on how young children learn literacy through songs and music.
-
Helping Young Children Get Ready to Read
Even very young children are learning to listen to words in order to gain speech and language skills. While this is happening, they are exploring print in books and throughout their environment in order to make connections between print and spoken words. This tool kit will provide information on print awareness, oral language, phonological awareness,…
-
The Power of Open-Ended Questions
Open-ended questions and phrases allow children to provide a full and meaningful answer that conveys their thoughts and feelings.
-
Lots of Dandelions
Nature play presents opportunities for teachers to introduce scientific concepts. In this video, we see a teacher join Fawn and Edwin, both age 4, as they blow the seeds from dandelions growing on the playground.
-
‘Look at Your Lines!’
Teachers help children develop their science skills by creating engaging activities that activate children’s curiosity and desire to discover the properties of materials. A visual art activity, such as the finger painting activity we see in this video, can be an opportunity to explore science concepts.
-
Maybe We Can Make a Road!
In this video, two children are playing at a sensory table filled with gravel, miniature road signs, and toy cars. The teacher introduces two unique words, terrain and yield, to the children as she plays side by side with them.
-
You’ve Got Blue Hands
Visual arts provide opportunities for children to use their fine motor skills to express their creativity. Children are active investigators as they explore color mixing and texture. Visual arts activities spark conversations where children can appreciate the expressions of others.
-
Look at It Go!
Messy play is a rich opportunity for conversation with peers and teachers. Exploring open-ended materials invites children to observe, make predictions, and use complex vocabulary to describe their experiences.
-
Resources to Help Serve Dual Language Learners (DLLs)
Across Illinois, early childhood programs serve a very culturally and linguistically diverse group of children and families.
-
Choose Good Books That Accurately Reflect Cultures and Home Languages
When teachers and child care directors are seeking new books to add to classroom libraries, it’s important to think intentionally about the children and families who will be reading those books.
-
Strategies for Developmentally Appropriate “Show and Tell” in Early Childhood Classrooms
The key to Show and Tell is to make it developmentally appropriate for the children who are participating to encourage optimal engagement and learning.
-
Language and Literacy in Inclusive Early Childhood Programs
In this interview, we speak with Elise Prosser, a speech language pathologist from the Urbana Early Childhood School in Urbana, IL. Ms. Prosser received her bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing science and master’s degree in speech language pathology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been working in the schools as a…
-
Get Ready to Read
Set your young child up for reading and writing by building knowledge, skills, and habits that create a strong foundation for future literacy.
-
Retelling “Caps for Sale”
Children gain great comprehension and communication skills when they have the opportunity for rich discussion during read-aloud times. Stories read aloud also can provide opportunities for children to use their memory skills and retell stories with their peers and teachers.
-
Talking About Numbers and Letters
In this video, 4-year-old Martín plays with letters in a bilingual prekindergarten classroom, where teachers provide instruction in both Spanish and English.
-
Maintaining Home Language Is a Great Gift
Young children are like sponges and take in a lot of information from their environment and process it to learn new things.
-
Bonding, Books, and Children
These resources contain helpful information about how to bond with your child through literature at a young age.
-
Investigating Wheels
A project is a part of the curriculum that involves children in investigating objects and events around them that are worth knowing more about. Project work is a way of uncovering a subject rather than just covering it. A project on wheels has the potential to involve the entire class, the children’s families, and community…
-
Tattoos and Teakettles: “Housekeeping” Conversations
In this video, three preschool girls interact with each other and their teacher in the dramatic play area during choice time.
-
The Right Word: Conversation and Print During Pretend Play
This clip shows children don’t necessarily need structured activities to meet benchmarks. When teachers schedule large blocks of time for free play, children can learn in unexpected ways by engaging with each other and the classroom environment.
-
One Morning at the Construction Table
When children build something, they often address physics problems related to keeping the structure together.
-
Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley: Learning Through an Action Song
In this video, we see a group of children singing the folksong, “Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow” during a large group activity.
-
Magnets and Cars
The teacher took the 3- and 4-year-olds to visit the automotive lab next door to the classroom. The next day she asked the children to predict what parts of a car would attract a magnet.
-
Mack Reads His Book
The teachers have encouraged Mack and his classmates to make their own books related to what they have learned during the project.
-
Learning about a Stethoscope
This video clip depicts interaction between some preschool-age children and a guest expert. The class has been investigating measurement. One small group of children has focused on measurement at the doctor’s office.
-
Getting to Know Rabbits
These supervised interactions between children and rabbits occurred during a science fair on the playground of a child care center.
-
Exploring Windshield Wipers
Children in a mixed-age early childhood classroom at a rural community college were engaged in a study of cars.
-
Bethany Draws a Wheel
The community college child care center in this video was near the automotive lab, where auto mechanics were trained. The families of the children were students, faculty, and members of the local community. Many of the families qualified for subsidized child care because of their income. Children had many different attendance patterns, due to their…
-
Scribbling as Early Steps to Reading and Writing
Young children tend to love colors and making marks with pens, pencils, crayons, and markers. An easy home activity is setting up a “coloring or writing” space with markers, paper, tablets, and even old magazines.
-
Project Approach for Preschoolers
Preschoolers like to investigate! They enjoy learning about the world around them. The Project Approach involves children in studies of things nearby that interest them and are worth knowing more about.
-
Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Music, Sound, and Movement
Music, sound, and movement can ease the waiting time blues!
-
Encouraging Child-to-Child Conversation
Group meetings are good times to encourage children to talk directly to each other about what matters to them.
-
Things to Do While You’re Waiting: Language and Literacy
You can help your child get ready to read while you’re on the move!
-
The Gift of Words: Reading and Games
Knowing many words and understanding them are important in developing thinking skills and in getting ready to read.
-
The Gift of Words: Conversation and Routines
Here are some ways for busy parents to add to a child’s school readiness with the gift of new words.
-
Project Approach: Phase 1—Choosing a Topic to Investigate
Here are some tips to help teachers make the final decision about what a project topic will be.
-
What Puppets Can Mean to Children
Part of the appeal of puppets is that they can “behave” like people while not exactly being people.
-
Literacy across the Preschool Curriculum
Adults can combine words and pictures to create printed materials that children can easily read.
-
Cooperation Across the Preschool Curriculum: Science
Cooperation means doing things together to reach a common goal. Each person’s needs are respected, and each person contributes to the group’s success in reaching its goal.
-
Young Authors at Work: Story Dictations
Preschoolers who haven’t yet learned to write can still be authors when they dictate their stories to an adult.
-
Young Authors at Work: Literature Response Journals
Literature response journals encourage children to draw, write, and talk about the books you share with them.
-
What’s Next? Predictions at Story Time
You can involve older preschoolers in making predictions when you read them a book that they haven’t heard before.
-
Say Yes to the Mess! Play with Rocks
Materials such as rocks can be important additions to a preschool’s outdoor play area.
-
Project Approach: Helping Preschoolers Represent What They Learn
During each phase of a class project, preschool children can represent their ideas about and understanding of a topic in many ways.
-
Project Approach: Helping Children Ask Questions
Here are some ways to help children develop and express their own questions during each phase of project work.
-
Predicting: Helping Preschoolers Look Ahead
Prediction skills are important in literacy, math, science, and social development.
-
The Power of the Pen: Let Children Choose Writing Centers!
When children see the power of written words, they want to write, too.
-
The Power of the Pen: Drawing and Scribbling
When young children draw or scribble, they are using the skills they will need for writing. You can support preschoolers’ first efforts to write in several ways.
-
Out and About with Preschoolers: Literacy Activities
Go ahead—take literacy outside!
-
Neighborhood Geography with Young Children
Children’s natural curiosity about places is the basis for learning about geography.