Literacy Activities at Home

Literacy skills are about more than just reading!

Alongside reading time, you can work with your child throughout the day to help them practice their letters and develop language skills. Read on for some ideas on how you can sprinkle some literacy fun throughout your daily home routine.

Letter Hunt

When you’re at home and your child wants to play, a great game is a letter hunt! You can pick a letter of the alphabet at random and ask your child to find something in the house that starts with that letter. For toddlers and preschoolers, this is a great game to get them ready for school. Help them sound out the beginnings of words so they can practice letter sounds. If you’d like to take it a step further, you can write letters out on popsicle sticks, or on paper, and draw from a hat to add some excitement and letter recognition to the mix!

Cook Together

While you prepare meals, you can get your child involved and help them learn at the same time! Ask them to identify foods and tools while you use them to make meals and talk through what you’re doing to make your food. This alone can help your child develop language skills and learn about sequencing, or doing things in order, which is a building block toward helping them tell stories. As they are able to do that, you can ask them to tell you how to do simple tasks like making a sandwich or cereal to help them take what they are thinking and put it in order on their own.

Play I Spy

The beloved game of I Spy is a great way to get your child to practice describing and recognizing things. Find objects in or around your home and describe them I Spy style – i.e., “I spy with my little eye something that is fuzzy.” After a while, they’ll realize you were talking about their stuffed animal! Let them find things for you to guess as well, and when creativity eludes you, just pull out an I Spy or another Seek-and-Find book.

Read, Write, Talk, Sing, Play

When in doubt, if you and your child are reading, writing, singing, talking or playing together, you are helping them develop those pre-literacy skills that set them up for success. Get creative and find ways to sprinkle some fun into your day. Your child will thank you for it!

Early Literacy Week

Sunday, May 2 – Saturday, May 8.

Enjoy free books for kids at checkout and blog posts on how to support your child’s literacy and outdoor story times. Plus, be entered into a grand prize drawing for a 3 month subscription to BookRoo, a Love Them Out Loud literacy box and a $50 gift card to Out of Print.

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