Kindergarten – Literacy – Letters, Sounds, and Words

At this point in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten ELA, we had just finished phase 1 of Jolly Phonics, which included learning the sounds/letters S, A, T, I, P, and N. We were starting phase 2, which focused on C/K, E, H, R, M, and D. We were also beginning to read words with those sounds in them, like sat, pin, ant, cat, hip, etc. The following invitations were set to help students become more confident in their letters, sounds, and words, as well as other cross-curricular concepts through play!

The station above was my loose parts station in the classroom at the time. We were working on name recognition and starting to encourage the students and convince them that they were beginning to read. I provided students with name template options as well as words with sounds they had learnt. Students could use the light table and various loose parts to trace or build their names and words! During this time, we were finishing up our colours unit in math and starting our shapes unit, so I included many different coloured and shaped loose parts and began to expose them to various shapes and colours. This loose parts station also allowed students to build and experiment on the light table with different materials that were clear/see-through or opaque, which helped it become a cross-curricular invitation.

This shelf was another cross-curricular piece that allowed students to explore with magnets, letters, and words. The shelf included a variety of different-shaped magnet tiles, a set of magnet blue consonant letters and red vowel letters, and two metal baking sheets. Students also realized that they could take the magnets and they would stick on the whiteboard. This shelf invited students to explore with building different shapes and structures using the magnet tiles and to build and read other words or letters using the magnet letters.

This invitation was set up on the tuff tray. I used a flour, water, and food colouring mixture inside a zip-loc bag to create sensory bags that allowed the students to use their fingers to practise writing. When I first set this up, I filled the bag too full, so students were not able to write easily, but I emptied the bags partially, and it allowed the students to draw pictures, letters, or words in the goop. Students also loved to just play with the sensory bags without practising their writing skills.

In our sensory bin, which was filled with sand, I included various sand toys, including a set of lowercase and uppercase alphabet sand moulds. This invitation was geared more towards the younger students in pre-k who were not all reading yet and some of the kindergartens who were still working on letter recognition while also working with sensory play. In one of the pictures above, a student was excited because she found an ‘A’ mould because her name starts with ‘A”.