How Do You Teach Letters Without Using Letter Of The Week?

Letter of the week has long been a popular way for preschool teachers to introduce letters and letter recognition to their little learners.

Typically, the letter of the week is structured by introducing one letter, and then for the next few days, the teacher reviews the letter at group time. Sometimes a craft or worksheet focusing on that same letter is also integrated.

Although it can be convenient, studies are consistently showing how this method is not the most effective way to introduce letters and literacy.

This doesn’t mean that teachers haven’t seen results from this practice, but it does mean that there are more developmentally appropriate and impactful ways to teach them.

Children are constantly learning so there’s no reason to isolate opportunities to learn letters throughout their day.

With the letter of the week method, children are expected to retain information for that week’s letter plus the previous letters with only a small time frame to master the new information they had been given.

There’s little time for the children to explore the other letters in-depth, no opportunity for real-world applications, and individualizing these lessons are rare, if done at all, because LOTW is usually introduced during large group or as a craft.

We miss the opportunity to tie literacy into their everyday experiences by limiting exposure and making children reliant on the teacher to feed them the information.

But how exactly do you help students learn their letters and letter recognition if you’re not using letter of the week?

It’s important to know that there are certain pre-literacy skills children need to learn first.

Simply being able to memorize a letter or repeat after you won’t be helpful for the child when they begin attempting to learn how to read, write and spell.

They need to understand things like the concept of print (ex: reading left to right for English readers or in whatever direction is correct for their native language), phonological awareness (hearing the difference in sounds), and narrative capabilities (ex: this happened first, then this happened next).

Activities like reading to them on a regular basis while pointing, emphasizing sounds while speaking, singing phonological rich songs, rhyming songs and poems, making animal noises while playing, etc can help build these skills.

Integrate these learning opportunities throughout their day and classroom. You can do this by:

• Having meaningful books available and accessible (not just limited to the Library center)

• Reading to them frequently, one-on-one and in a group

• Labeling your classroom and the materials

• Pointing out letters and sounds in conversation

• Having conversations with children and avoiding “baby talk” (such as using words like diape-y instead of diaper)

In younger classrooms don’t feel pressured to have them know the full alphabet forward and backward. focus on strengthening those preliteracy skills.

Introducing Letters

When it comes to learning, young children learn best through hands-on and interactive opportunities and play.

To learn more about this you can check out our free training “What If We Stopped Having Circle Time”

Integrating letters into their everyday play and being able to physically touch and interact with materials helps them understand and retain the information.

This is the difference between rote learning vs active learning.

Rote learning they’re simply repeating A, B, and C out of habit or memorization. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes children pick up on letters through repetition.

For example, when they see their name next to their picture - they might not have decoded the individual letters yet, but they’ve come to memorize those lines paired with their face and now understand that must be their written name.

This is good! As mentioned before understanding print has meaning and significance, and it’s also different from drawings, is a preliteracy skill.

It becomes a problem when rote learning methods like flashcards and singling the alphabet every day is the only way children get information. And LOTW doesn’t delve any further than showing and memorizing in most curricula.

We want to make sure children aren’t just repeating the letters, but understanding their function so that they can move on to blending sounds, learning language rules, and spelling.

Hands-on activities and play help cement true understanding, and when we embed these opportunities into their whole day, as supposed to limiting it to a single moment like circle or crafts, then we can expand and present more opportunities to explore letters and a variety of them too - not just the dedicated letter for that week.

Ideas for fun and hands-on activities:

• Tracing letters in shaving cream, sand, or rice trays

• Creating Letter soup by mixing letter tiles in a bowl

• Sculpting letters with playdoh or clay

• Creating letters with natural materials (leaves, twigs, pebbles)

• Letter-matching blocks, stickers, puzzles, etc

• Letter scavenger hunts

• Cutting letters and words out of magazines

• Letter hopscotch or bean bag toss

• Creating letter collages

Have these activities scattered throughout your different centers during free play.

Examples of this could be having the letter soup recipe in dramatic play, a letter-matching puzzle in manipulatives, and letter blocks in the block center.

Doing these activities spontaneously might not feel like “teaching” but children are natural learners and they’re absorbing information in those small moments.

Learning isn’t an isolated experience that only happens at circle time; it can happen during centers, snack, potty time, any time really!

Don’t hesitate to read the shelf labels out loud as you’re cleaning up, spell out things as you’re writing in front of children, point out when items have matching sounds (“Apple and Alison have the same sounds!”), and mention letters and words as you see them.

Start with their name.

Another preliteracy skill children need is the motivation to read, and introducing children to the letters in their name first can be a great way to get them excited about learning their letters.

Here are 5 ways to introduce their name:

1. Have parents label all of their belongings and teachers label their cubby. When it’s time to put away something or grab an item out of their cubby point out the label. Show the child the label on their lunch box also matches the one on their cubby. When it’s potty time you can ask something like “Can you grab me one of your pull-ups out of your cubby? It has your name on it. It starts with ‘A’”.

2. Have children “sign in” by circling their names in the morning or scribbling in a box next to their names. For really young kids you can also put their picture next to their name to help them identify it. As their skills develop remove the picture so they have to just identify their name.

3. Let them sign their own artwork. You can write their name, but encourage them to write it too.

4. Have cards with their name in different centers. You can put a small basket of cards with their names written on it in the manipulatives and children sort through it to find their own name, or laminate cards with their name and place it in the art center. See what the children feel inspired to create!

5. Use name cards. You can have children grab their name card and place it on the table where they want to sit for lunch, grab their card and sit down for morning affirmation, or use it to hold their spot if they’d like to ask for permission for something that is monitored. For example: if only three kids can fit at the sensory table at once, they can grab their name card and put it down to show they’d like to use it next when a spot is open.

You’ll be amazed at just how much children can pick up without an adult having to explicitly teach them.

Remember, learning for children is very organic and spontaneous so while you might not be doing flashcards or letter crafts, if you’re intentional about conversations, the materials in your classroom, and seeking out these opportunities while they play, you’ll see just how much learning they do!

Easy Construction Worker Small World

Small world bins can be extremely fun and despite how elaborate they can look on Pinterest, they’re usually actually pretty simple to make.

Here’s a construction worker small world that was under $7 to make using dollar store items and my sons toys.

The materials I used I had around the house already because we do a lot of sensory play, but they were mostly purchased from the home decor section of the dollar store.

If you’re looking for sensory play material, skip the toy section and head to the decor and holiday section of the dollar store; that’s where most of the great material is located.

The serving tray we use for sensory play had been reused for many projects but that was purchased at Target. You can use the trays from the dollar store however or even a deep pan or cookie sheet.

• Black decor rocks/fish tank pebbles.

• Decor logs (or you can use material from outside! Even better)

• River rocks

• Plastic Construction truck and Lego man

• Whatever other material inspires you!

We laid down the rocks and spread them out and arranged the material.

My son loves watching the process so if you’re doing this at home or in the classroom, let your kids watch you put it together or help. It’s super exciting for them!

If the small rocks are a hazard concern you can substitute them for beach sand or kinetic sand.

My son had a blast playing with it. This small world has a lot of tactile sensory aspects with the pebbles and rough wood logs. The pebbles also made a really cool sound when he drove the truck across it as well.

He did eventually decide to add his Hotwheel cars (which he does for most of our projects) and sticky blocks which is fine.

This is a very important part to remember about small world!

It’s okay to for them to add or take away items from the small world. The ultimate goal is to let the child explore and engage with it the way they want to.

It ruins the point if you try to keep the project looking perfect!

Questions/conversation prompts you can ask to extend learning:

• How many ______ are there?

• How do the logs feel? (Introduce new vocabulary like “course” and “rugged”)

• Have you seen any constructions sites lately? What do you think they were building?

• What other kind of materials should we use to build ____?

• Which of these stones is the biggest?

• Which log should we use as the base to make our tower sturdier?

• How do you think the construction worker would feel if he accidentally built the tower backward?

Drop by our Facebook group and show us what small world/sensory play bins you’re creating at home or in your classroom!

5 Ways to Encourage Parent Support in the Classroom

It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes one to teach them as well.

Being an early childhood educator can be challenging and it helps immensely when there’s a supportive team in your corner.

Unfortunately, it’s not always an automatic response for parents to rally around daycare/preschool teachers and we need to find ways to encourage their support.

The stronger bonds and relationships we can build with parents, the easier it is to help the child succeed in the classroom. This relationship becomes especially important if challenging and difficult behavior arises.

It’s important that parents and teachers not see each other as competing influences in the children’s lives, but as a unit, with both working to ensure the best for the child and their education.

Here are some ways to build strong relationships and encourage parental support in the classroom.

Get the parents involved in the classroom:

A lot of parents have to work long hours, which means leaving their kids to the care of someone else for long periods of time.

It’s easy for parents to feel disconnected from the classroom and what their children are doing because of this.

For some parents, disconnection can result in not understanding how the home environment and parenting effects the child in the classroom and vice versa.  

You may notice a lack of consistency for attendance and/or drop-off times, not taking the concerns of teachers seriously, low engagement for classroom events, and little sense of urgency for requests like evaluations/assessment results or paperwork.

Likewise, that disconnect can sometimes also leave parents feeling like someone is replacing them or trying to overstep their parental position in the child’s life, nitpicking/over-exaggerating, or judging a parent if a teacher is perceived as pushing too hard or delivering difficult information like behavior challenges.

Help parents get involved in the classroom and reconnect with their child’s learning environment by giving them opportunities to volunteer. If they have a way to contribute and be a part of the classroom experience, they’re more likely to feel connected to it.

This way they don’t see it as you on one side, them on the opposite side, and the child alternating between these two sides, but rather a circular relationship.

Although, not every parent will be able to volunteer their time they might be better suited to volunteering their talents or funding. Be sure to offer different ways for parents to contribute.

You can offer parents the chance to:

• Read to the classroom

• Help with classroom events

• Bring in snacks, and classroom materials

• Help with larger projects (like changing classrooms theme or DIY projects)

• Decorate the bulletin board

• Contributing specific skills (like parents who are good with gardening or painting)

• Creating center/lesson materials from home

• Offer special extracurricular activities (like a soccer game, yoga, or music class)

• Help with school events like classroom parties

Parent Teacher Conferences

Even though the children are young, it’s still important we have regular discussions about children and their development, goals, and progress with their parents.

Sometimes the brief 3 minutes we have with parents during pick-up/drop-off times don’t offer the opportunity to discuss things in depth.

Having these conversations can help both teacher and parents gain insight into how the child is doing and what might be impacting certain behaviors and development.

Not only that, it can help parents feel more involved and more included in the decision-making process when teachers are creating lessons and individual goals.

This is the perfect opportunity to help parents gain insight into the inner workings of the classroom, your curriculum, and the expectations you have and hear what the parents are needing from you as well.

Conferences shouldn’t only be to discuss behavior issues either. They can be used to discuss overall progress and growth.

Not all childcare and preschools can have dedicated time to parent-teacher conferences, however, and likewise, not all parents can make it during the day.

Consider pre-planning a day that parents are notified of at the beginning of the year, hosting online conferences with parents over platforms like Skype or Zoom, having a substitute available for teachers if you can’t close the school for a day, or sending out detailed “progress reports” that include a section for parents questions and comments.  

Conferences can also communicate to parents that what children do, even in early childhood classrooms, is still vitally important and you’re a professional.

It’s more than just “daycare”, but important, foundational experiences that will build on their future educational journey.

Open Communication

Outside of “daily reports”, there should be open communication between parents and teachers.

Often, besides “they did well today” there’s no real conversation between parents and teachers. Utilize unique apps like MyKidzDay to engage in meaningful conversation and keep parents in the loop about their child.

Not every day is going to warrant a page-long report about what the child has done, but sharing pictures, having a parent board or a display of children’s work, and newsletters can really help parents feel like they know what’s happening in their child’s day-to-day life at school.

Parent Education Nights/Resources

Teachers can really have a lot of insight that parents might appreciate, and as a teacher sometimes we have access to resources that might be harder for parents to find on their own.

Consider having parent education nights on things parents might be struggling with, have expressed interest in, or would help the teachers and staff out more if the parents were more aware of that topic.

It could be a short 30-minute discussion, informative pamphlets/articles, guest speakers, or information on classes/workshops in the area.

Some good topics could include:

• Positive Discipline

• Stress Management

• Healthy Eating and exercise for young children

• Literacy and reading for young children

• The importance of play

• Resources for single parent/military/blended/etc homes

It’s also good to regularly keep parents informed about the importance of the teachers and their role in the classroom and the children’s lives.

These types of classes are a great way to help parents gain insight into how important early childhood education is and how much their support means.

School Wide Events

When they feel close to other parents and their families, the staff, and everyone as a community, they’re more likely to be invested in the individual classrooms.

Host school-wide events like family picnics, holiday events, garage sales/fundraisers, read-a-thons, and craft days to bring the school together.

Let Them Get To Know You

You don’t have to necessarily be friends with all the parents and caregivers, but building a solid relationship can be key to getting them motivated enough to support you in the classroom.

Have an updated bio about yourself somewhere for parents to see, and connect with them over a similarity or shared experience (ex: if you notice they wear lots of Stranger Things merch you can mention you also enjoy the show or if you’re both from the same state), or share bits of your personality like a silly, appropriate meme on the parent sign in board.

A guest appearance outside of the school environment, such as stopping by the school fundraiser at a frozen yogurt shop, can help parents see you as an individual and not just “Anna’s teacher” and bridge that gap in your relationship with them.

The biggest part of encouraging parent support in the classroom is keeping communication open, and making sure the school's environment is friendly and inclusive of parents.

Take time to truly listen to the parents and their concerns, help educate and include them, and make them feel welcomed and appreciated.  

While we have no control over their parenting decisions and what they do outside of the classroom, we can invite them to be contributors inside the classroom.

It’s not us vs them, but all of us together, to help their child thrive.

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What is the Reggio Emilia Approach?

There are a lot of early childhood philosophies that we can learn from, and even implement, in our classrooms.

However, despite the growing popularity of these philosophies (more specifically in the United States), there is still a lot of misunderstanding about exactly what these different philosophies entail and what they mean.

Getting to know what different philosophies are out there, what the core belief and practices are, and even gaining inspiration from them can be greatly beneficial to our classrooms; or at the very least, help us build community with those who teach in a different environment than us. 

In this blog post, we’ll be looking at the Reggio Emilia philosophy. 

 

History

Reggio Emilia is a small town in Italy in which the philosophy developed. It started in the 1940’s and gained popularity during the time when there was a strong push for progressive education that followed the child’s needs. 

It’s good to note that there’s no specific way to be a Reggio Emilia school, hence why most schools will call themselves Reggio inspired and many consider only the school in the town as a true Reggio Emilia school.

Schools follow the overall beliefs and perspectives on the role of the teachers, students, and classroom environment, but each classroom could operate differently, depending on the needs of the students.

Core Beliefs

The environment is the third teacher.

This is a common term you’ll hear often when it comes to Reggio Emilia, in which they refer to the classroom as the “third teacher”. The concept behind this is the importance of the classroom environment and how the children interact with it.

The classroom and the materials inside of it are crucial to strengthening and empowering the children during their learning experience. Everything from the lighting and colors in the classroom, to how the materials are displayed and how the furniture is arranged is held in great regard. 

The Teacher (or atelierista) is a guide. 

The lessons are child-led and developed around the children’s interest. It’s the teacher's job to help them explore their interests in depth and provide opportunities for them to do so.

Student’s are capable of directing their own learning experience.

There’s a strong trust in students directing their learning, and that they’re already drive by their own curiosity and natural interest to explore without adult intervention. There’s also a strong emphasis on group work and communication.

Documenting.

Another popular term in Reggio, many people misunderstand this as simply hanging the children’s artwork up in an elaborate way. There’s actually a very intentional process behind these displays, giving the children (and teachers) a visual display of their progression and learning process.

Many lessons are carried out over a longer length of time that’s not typical in traditional Early Childhood classrooms and documentation is used to keep track of their thought process, achievements, and learning progression. These also spark future ideas and inspiration. 

The Hundred Languages of Children.

The belief that children express, learn, and share their thoughts and ideas in a variety of ways, and the classroom and teacher should offer plenty of opportunities for the child to explore ways of expression. They’re all valued and no “language” or method of learning and expression holds more importance than another. 

So what can we learn from it?

While your classroom might not be Reggio Inspired, there are still some concepts that can be adapted and implemented in any classroom. Some of them to consider are:

The Hundred Languages of Children: take a look around your classroom and see if you’re classroom offers a variety of ways for children to learn and explore their interests.

Children all learn in different ways and forms and it’s important for any class to make sure they’re meeting the needs of all their children. 

The Third Teacher: while you might not adopt the typical nature-inspired look of a Reggio environment, it is worth it to make sure your classroom is working for you and your students.

• Does your classroom encourage exploration and creativity?

• What atmosphere do your colors and decor create in your classroom? 

• Does your classroom belong to the children or is it designed for adults? 

If you’d like to read more about Reggio Emilia and its philosophy here are some great resources. 

Fairy Dust Teaching

An Everyday Story

Early Childhood News
 

What is your experience with Reggio Emilia?

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The Magic of Kinetic Sand

Kinetic sand feels and "behaves" much like wet sand and was originally made for sculpting but has found its way into many classrooms.

It is by far one of my favorite items for the preschool classroom and for good reason.  

Why Kinetic sand?

Kinetic Sand is a great sensory experience for children.

Not only is it unique in the way that it feels, but compacting it, molding, and kneading it gives children the tactile input that they need in multiple ways.

It can be incredibly relaxing for kids who want something soothing.

The slow almost lazy movement of the sand, as well as the soft texture, can really be grounding and help calm busy minds and bodies, especially for children still learning to regulate emotional responses. This is also therapeutic for stressed-out teachers! 

But it can also be equally stimulating for kiddos who need something to smoosh and squeeze. Kinetic sand can be stuffed into cups and hold its shape and easily flattened back into a pancake.

It's a really great tool to use for fine motor skills, such as using the knife to cut through the sand, building grip strength (a crucial prewriting skill) while forming and compacting the sand, and kneading through the sand or using tweezers to pick up toys out of the sand.

Kinetic sand can also be used to extend/enhance learning, such as using colorful sand for color recognition, using it as a base for a small world setting, burying letters/numbers for children to uncover, or using it in dramatic play to make ice cream cones and waffles.

Kinetic sand also doesn’t dry out!

That means you can use it over and over again if you remind the kids to wash their hands before using it.

You can store it in a ziplock bag, a jar, or just leave it in the sensory bin/container and even without a lid, it will be fine.

It's also easier than other materials to clean up should it spill on the floor or carpet since it just clumps together.

It's super easy to DIY your own Kinetic sand as well. All you need is:

• Dish Soap

• Water

• Fine Sand (you can buy from the craft store)

• Cornstarch

• Food Coloring (optional) 

1. First, mix the sand and cornstarch together

2. Then mix the water and dish soap (you want it to be bubbly) in a separate bowl

3. Then slowly add them together until you get the right consistency 

You can fold in the food coloring afterward if you choose to add color or diluted essential oil for scent.

Depending on the consistency of your sand, you may have to add more water. You do want to avoid using craft sand that has a lot of rocks and pebbles (like playground sand) or is too chunky.

If you're not a DIY kind of person you can always buy kinetic sand on Amazon or in most big stores like Walmart.

Let us know in the free facebook group for early childhood educators: Do you use Kinetic sand in your classroom?

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