Welcome to Week 6!
If you are joining us for the first time, I encourage you to first read Play to Write-Write to Read: Week 1. Then, be sure to come back and join us for this week’s play group activities!
Welcome back!
Just a reminder those of you who are joining our Play Group each week, you are asked to please do 2 things:
1. Comment on how these activities worked or didn’t work with your child. Feel free to reply to one another to encourage and offer your advice as well! This will also be great to hold us all accountable to one another to actually follow through… don’t we all need a little of that!? 
2. Share: Bloggers-you can link up a writing activity you’ve done with your child in the past to share with everyone. You are totally welcome to reteach the same strategies on your blogs and then link up those posts the following week (please do be sure to link back). Non-Bloggers & Bloggers we encourage you to teach/share these activities with another mom friend. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if more and more parents began to learn Best Practices for writing to ‘play’ with their kids; these types of activities are not just for teachers! Let’s empower each other by sharing!
The FUNdamentals
(The FUNdamentals section focuses on guiding your toddler/preschooler through the basics of developing the fine motor and gross motor skills needed for the physical act of writing, but doing so with ‘fun’ activity.)
Activity: Writing with Words
Objectives:
1. Model correct grammar and word order
2. Correct your child’s improper grammar/word order
3. Have Fun!
Parenting A Child to Write with Words
Imagine yourself studying and working hard to learn a language just to have someone laugh or correct you every time you open your mouth. That is enough to make you HATE a language right!? As a former E.S.L teacher, I learned and used many strategies on how to ‘correct’ a child’s language learning speaking without deflating their self-esteem. When I became a parent, I realized that without realizing it, I was now using these same strategies with my own children in correcting their ‘baby talk’ and helping them build complete sentences so that others could understand their needs, wants, and feelings. Here are a few ‘natural’ strategies to incorporate into your everyday, play, work, or conversations with your toddlers/preschoolers. Although, I must admit… there are a few words like: hang-ga-burg (hamburger) that I’m not quite ready to correct… I just can’t go there quite yet!
1. Example 1: ”Mom, I goed to the store with Daddy!” You respond, “Oh, you went to the store with Daddy!? Did you have fun!?”
- Correction through naturally repeating their sentences with the correct word choice/grammar
- Your goal in this would be to eventually have them answer, “Yeah, I went to the store with Daddy; it was a lot of fun. They self-corrected AFTER you modeled without you forcing them to repeat you.
- Your child can learn to use correct speech without a bazillion worksheets.
- As your child asks you about new words or things they find around them, take the opportunity to teach the new word and provide a short, simple definition.
- It is important that you ask them to try to say the word for themselves.
- Try to use the new word at least 3-5 more times that day, in various ways for it to become a new permanent word in their vocabulary. Each time use it in such a way that they also use the word (have them repeat, ask them a question about it, have them tell someone what they saw or learned that day).
Writing with Words Activity
Explain to your child that writing first begins in their head, then their mouth, and then finally their (of their parents) pencil.
- Practice this… Tell them to think about one of their friends without talking for 15 seconds. Hold your finger to your mouth and watch a timer, tell them to think and write about their friend in their head without talking.
- Now have them share their writing with you aloud with their mouth.
- Have them repeat their sentence(s) a second time (great for memory recall) and write down what they say.
- Reread their sentences and show them how their writing actually began in their head, then went to their mouth, all before being written down on paper!
- Pick a new topic, and repeat.
Writing Practice
(The Writing Practice section focuses on a new ‘Best Practice’ Writing Strategy each week. A ‘Best Practice’ writing strategy is a technique or methodology that, through experience and research, has proven to reliably lead to creating strong writers.)
Activity: Make Your Own ABC Books
Objectives:
1. Identify the same beginning letter sound in words.
2. Cut and paste pictures of words with the featured initial letter.
3. Write the letter.
4. Draw a picture of something that begins with the featured initial letter.
5. Read their ABC book to others.
6. Have Fun!
Materials:
- ABC book printables (LOVE these printables, SO stinkin’ cute!)
- Magazines
- Scissors
- Glue
- Markers or crayons
4. Parent Challenge: Like many of you, this is a great activity that has a TON of benefits for your child, but let’s face it WE ARE ALL BUSY MOMS! I challenge you to commit to a time (once a week, once a month, etc) to continue in making all the ABC books (yes… A-Z)! Share in today’s comment section if you are going to take this challenge and WHEN you are going to commit to working on a new book.
*The Cheerios and Lattes family is currently studying Letter D in our Letter of the Week activities, but began the Letter A book this week. We are going to commit to working on a new book each week of a ‘review’ letter we did previously. …yes you can hold me to this! Please do!
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While I don’t hold with using “letter of the week”, those are pretty darn cute printables!
And I had to laugh, as I was making name books with my preschool kiddos today (which involved the letters in their names and picture prompts). Thanks for hosting!! 
Mary Catherine- That’s so ironic that you were making name books today; how fun!
What a fantastic series, Mackenzie. I will definitely be using this with my oldest son when he gets a little bit older.
I featured this on my kids’ co-op post this week: http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/2012/09/21/this-n-that-thursday-6/
Thanks for linking up!
Mackenzie, thank you so much for sharing all of your work on designing this incredible series! I just found it and am happy I did! Will use and share:)
Thanks Katherine! So glad you found it!