This list of resources will help teachers build a strong literacy foundation for children that will serve them for life from expanding story time to oral, vocabulary, reading, and writing games and activities. Full of research-based tips and strategies, these books will give teachers, parents, and caregivers the tools they need to transform everyday play times into meaningful language-learning experiences.
Playful Activities for Reading Readiness
Laying a Foundation for Literacy
Learning to read can—and should—be fun! Full of hands-on, use-tomorrow activities, ideas for extended practice in centers, literacy connections, and real-life classroom examples, Playful Activities for Reading Readiness will help pre-K and kindergarten teachers provide children a firm literacy foundation.
Literacy for All Young Learners
In Literacy for All Young Learners, Mary Jalongo, PhD, offers 65 strategies to support literacy learning with children from preschool through the third grade. Each strategy is designed to be simple to use with all of the children in your classroom—from the not-yet-readers to the fluent readers—and each strategy is tied to the Common Core State Standards for kindergarten through third grade.
Raising a Talker
Easy Activities for Birth to Age 3!
Combining fun, easy-to-do activities with research-based tips and developmental overviews, Raising a Talker helps parents and caregivers naturally transform play sessions into meaningful language-learning experiences. Little tweaks and easy changes in everyday play create nurturing environments where communication and discovery can flourish.
Time for a Story
Sharing Books with Infants and Toddlers
Planning story times with infants and toddlers can be challenging for parents and caregivers, but with thought and preparation, you can maximize the reading experiences of these little learners! In Time for a Story, explore fun and engaging ways to talk, sing, read, write, and play with young children throughout the day to help them begin developing important pre-literacy skills, including phonological awareness, print awareness, letter knowledge, and background knowledge.
Jump into Literacy
Active Learning for Preschool Children
Jump into Literacy combines children's love of active games with over 100 lively literacy activities. Written by a well-known children's movement specialist, these joyful games will engage the whole child in moving and playing as a way to develop the literacy skills needed for reading and writing.
Everyday Literacy
Environmental Print Activities for Young Children Ages 3 to 8
The activities in this book integrate environmental print - words, letters, and symbols found in everyday life - into a curriculum that makes it easy to encourage children's literacy every day. Young children develop literacy through direct involvement in meaningful experiences with print. Everyday Literacy provides hands-on ideas for turning newspapers, signs and signals in the community, and catalogs and magazines into literacy experiences.
Reading Games for Young Children
The games in the book are designed to enrich three- to six-year-olds' pre-reading skills and prepare them to be successful readers through exciting games that will develop their love for language and joy of reading.
Literacy Play
Over 300 Dramatic Play Activities That Teach Pre-Reading Skills
Literacy Play is chock-full of creative dramatic play activities that teach important pre-reading skills while bringing children's imaginations to life! Whether they decide to be firefighters, to open a pet store, or to have a tea party, children will increase their vocabulary, communicate with their friends, and learn to recognize environmental print - all important skills for pre-readers.
Up, Down, Move Around: Math & Literacy
Active Learning for Preschoolers
Young children learn best when they connect physical activity with learning! Up, Down, Move Around is packed with fun, simple math and literacy activities that will have your children jumping, shaking, rolling, dancing, and clapping as they learn!
The Essential Literacy Workshop Book
10 Complete Early Childhood Training Modules
From scripts to PowerPoint presentations to agendas to handouts, The Essential Literacy Workshop Book provides trainers with everything they need to train teachers to develop children's literacy skills. Perfect for trainers and directors, this book has 10 comprehensive, three-hour training modules.
Read! Move! Learn!
Active Stories for Active Learning
Enhance literacy skills, bring the magic of a good book to the classroom, and encourage active, healthy lifestyles in young children with Read! Move! Learn!
Playful Writing
150 Open-Ended Explorations in Emergent Literacy
Playful Writing builds on the cyclical nature of learning with open-ended play ideas that will inspire children to write. This book offers teachers, caregivers, and parents of children ages three to eight, 150 ideas for inspiring and scaffolding children’s writing explorations.
Starting with Stories
Engaging Multiple Intelligences Through Children's Books
Featuring 100 well-loved children's books, Starting with Stories has more than 1500 activities to actively engage every learning style. First, choose one of the 100 popular children's books to read together. Then enhance the experience with ideas for learning centers, activities, and literacy experiences.
Fun Baby Learning Games
Activities to Support Development in Infants, Toddlers, and Two-Year Olds
This book brings a new approach to having fun and learning with the youngest children by incorporating theory and research-backed activities in a fun and engaging way, helping your infant or toddler nurture his/her skills and reach emerging milestones, and fostering development in one or more of the five areas of development – including language learning!
