Literacy Spot #6: Messages of Love

Does your child love to receive mail?  Why not use this week leading up to Valentine’s Day to leave your child one little message of love each day?

Simply write seven special notes to your child and leave one a day for them to discover in their own little letterbox.  Either a toy one (if you already have one) or you could make one together from a small cardboard box.

Display the letterbox in an easily accessible place and add a little notepad and some writing implements to invite your child to ‘write’ (and by this I mean pretend play at writing) notes and letters of their own (read more about inviting your child to play here).

You can extend this activity by sitting with your child as they ‘write’ letters and notes or make cards for extended family members, friends, or even their toys.

This is such a simple way to engage your child and interest them in literacy, which is exactly what emergent literacy activities should be about.

What is Childhood 101′s Literacy Spot? It is a weekly reminder of the importace of young children learning playfully as each week I share one idea for playing around with literacy, taken from my many years working as an early childhood teacher.

Visit the previous Literacy Spot posts for more fun ideas for playing with literacy.