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This is a workshop I conducted on the importance of playing pretend. The workshop was conducted with our regular Family Storytime crowd of grown-ups with children ages 0-5. I framed the workshop as a regular story time, but included early literacy tips at appropriate moments throughout the workshop.

Book 1: Not A Box by Antoinette Portis

Theme Song: This is a sort of made up song, I originally found a version of it in some strange YouTube video, but edited it to better suit our workshop. Of course we did some pretending for each line of the song.

The Pretend Song
It’s fun to be this
It’s fun to be that
To leap like a lamb
To climb like a cat
To hop like a frog
To swim like a fish
To trot like a horse
To eat from your dish (om nom nom nom nom nom)
It’s fun to pretend
To play make believe
It’s fun to pretend
Or just to be me!

Re-focus song

Book 2: Meeow and the Little Chairs by Sebastien Braun

We ended by using pretend to sing some of our favorites songs such as Tick Tock (pretending to be a cuckoo clock) and Snake in the Grass (pretending to be a snake). 

Tips:

The following are the tips we discussed throughout our workshop:

• Playing pretend is important because it helps our child develop:
  • Vocabulary
  • Language
  • Social skills
  • Problem solving skills
• What can we play pretend with at home or on the go?
  • Boxes
  • Clothes and costumes
  • Pots and pans
  • Stuffed animals and dolls
  • Subway cards and old credit cards
• Encourage your child to tell a story by asking open ended questions while they are playing:
  • What is this character doing?
  • Where are they going?
  • How do they feel right now?

At the very end I also gave out this nice handout I found that summarized our workshop well: https://www.handyhandouts.com/pdf/271_PretendPlay.pdf

 

This was a workshop I conducted at a local school with parents of children ages around 3-5. The following is my outline of discussion for the workshop as well as the fun activity we did at the end.

Outline for Family Literacy Workshop

Welcome, Intros

What is early literacy? (Discussion)

Definition: Early literacy is what a child knows about reading and writing before they have the ability to read and write ex: scribbling with a crayon, recognizing shapes

5 Foundations of Literacy? (Discussion)

Read, Write, Talk, Sing, Play (I like to sing it to a beat, drum on table, helps us remember)

• Read—read together, develops literacy skills, no X amount of time per day, okay to read book okay to repeat books, not finish a book, talk about pictures only, at this age we focus on development of LOVE of reading

• Write—develops fine motor skills making it easier for child to hold a pencil, type etc
• Talk—vocab skills, language skills, storytelling skills, social skills, word identification
• Sing—singing slows down words so that its easier to understand vocabulary, also introduces children to rhythm
• Play—develops, vocab, language skills and especially problem solving skills, gross motor skills

Silly Song Break! For this workshop we sang The Bananas Unite Song and Snake in the Grass. These can be found in my favorite songs section.

Today our activity will focus on the skill of writing.

Before a child excels at writing they develop fine motor skills, small hand movements that help with things later on such as writing and holding scissors.

What are some things you can do at home for writing skills?

• Encourage scribbling by providing many opportunities to write and draw. Keep crayons and paper on a table where children can return again and again.

• Get magnetic letters for the refrigerator or make letters from cardboard for the children to play with.

• Have them sign their drawings to develop hand-eye coordination and build up their writing muscles. Children also begin to understand that writing represents words.

• Talk about what they draw, have them make up stories or write captions for their drawings so they make the connection between written and spoken language.

Today we will be using easy to find at home materials to make a fun activity that your children can play with and that you can use to play with them. This activity will help your child develop those all important fine motor skills!  As an added bonus, this activity, like many that you already do at home, covers many of the early literacy skills such as play, write, and talk when you engage with your child!

Activity: Gel Bags

Ingredients:

• Clear hair gel
• Quart sized freezer ziploc bags
• Odds and ends (beads, pennies, old jewelry, pom poms, glitter)
• Duct tape

Instructions:

• Add gel generously into one ziploc bag, then add your odds and ends
• Close first bag, duct tape, then place upside down into second bag
• Duct tape second bag closed for added protection against leak
• Smush away!

Extension activity:

Tape an X or O to the bag, challenge your child to get a particular item into the middle of the O!