Literacy Fun in Kindy — St. Emilie's Catholic Primary School

From the moment your child was born, they have been developing fundamental skills and understandings that will one day enable them to become literate. Oral language, phonological and phonemic awareness (the awareness of sounds), as well as alphabetic knowledge and an understanding of common print concepts (an understanding that print goes from left to right and from up to down on a page etc) are important foundational building blocks for future literacy development and success.

In Kindy this year, the children have been building on their current knowledge and understandings and have been developing many fundamental pre-literacy skills that will help them to one day become little readers and writers.

This term, the children have begun a ‘Sounds from Home’ program where students are invited to search for items beginning with a particular sound and bring along to school to share their findings with the class. This enables the children to further develop their oral language and communication skills as well as deepen their understandings and ability to isolate and hear the initial sounds in words.

Each week the children have also been doing some fun, hands on learning experiences which focus on and further develop their initial sound awareness and their ability to identify and name these letters. We have taken a multi-sensory approach to learning the letters of the alphabet each week. Multi-sensory learning gives learners more than one way to make connections, learn new concepts and retain information. This learning style invites and encourages children to use their visual (sight), auditory (hearing), kinaesthetic (body movement) and tactile (touch) senses when gaining new knowledge and developing their current understandings.

So far we have enjoyed making and eating apple slinkies for Aa is for apple.