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Popular Posts of 2011: Top Literacy Spots

December 31, 2011

The Literacy Spot series highlighted one simple idea each week for playing around with literacy with young children. And the most popular Literacy Spot posts were… Routines with Printable Picture Cards Nursery Rhymes Felt Board Stories 10 Pre-Writing Activities for Under 5s Labels Playing With Letters See the complete Literacy Spot series here or check [...]

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Literacy Spot #50: Playing With Puppets

December 20, 2011
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Puppets have to be my favourite resource for encouraging the development of oral communication skills. As children play with puppets, they play with language – alternating voices, creating personas, extending vocabulary, and listening to others. As with many imaginary play resources, puppets also provide children with an open-ended platform to play out their knowledge of [...]

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Literacy Spot #49: Instructions

December 12, 2011

When we recently received the Playmobil swimming pool set, Immy and I had a great time working together to assemble it. In fact, Immy is even quite good when it comes to helping with Ikea flat pack assembly! She loves looking at the instructions to see which piece we need next and then matching the [...]

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Kids Books 101: Parrot Carrot

December 10, 2011
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I have written before about the value of rhyme and the fun that playing around with rhyming words can add to early literacy development ( you’ll find references in these posts – here, here and here). We recently received a copy of the newly released Parrot Carrot by Jol and Kate Temple (Allen & Unwin, [...]

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Literacy Spot #48: Letter Stamps (and Christmas Decorations!)

December 5, 2011
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Most children love to stamp and letter stamps are a great addition to your writing area once your children are interested in exploring and playing with letters. Of course, you aren’t just limited to stamping on paper. Stamping on playdough, salt dough or air dry clay is lots of fun too. I like the challenge [...]

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Our Christmas Reading Pile: Picture Books

December 3, 2011
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Here are some of the Christmas themed picture books Immy is enjoying right now… Christmas Wombat, Jackie French & Bruce Whatley, 2011 Immy is already a big fan of the quirky Diary of a Wombat and Diary of a Baby Wombat and was excited to receive Christmas Wombat this week.  It offers a very funny [...]

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Literacy Spot #47: Letters to Santa

November 28, 2011
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One of the activities Immy has been excited about this year (for the first time) is writing a letter to Santa so when I heard that my friend Kate over at Picklebums was developing a free printable Christmas letter writing set it seemed like the perfect match Immy has been talking about the gifts she [...]

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Literacy Spot #46: Restaurants, Cafes and Sandwich Bars!

November 21, 2011
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Setting up an imaginative play restaurant, cafe or sandwich bar is a wonderful way to engage children with all forms of literacy – speaking, listening, (pre-) reading and (pre-) writing. Plus it is easy to do at home or at preschool!  In fact, this sandwich shop is the latest invitation to play that I have [...]

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