Incorporating Reading and Writing in Center Activities

Incorporating reading and writing activities into centers provides children with opportunities to use language in personal and purposeful ways. Prekindergarten children enjoy acting out real-life experiences. Such experiences help them to see how reading and writing are part of everyday jobs and activities. Providing children with relevant reasons for reading and writing will help increase the language development that takes place in each center. Each of the following examples is linked to a story in the Breakthrough to Literacy prekindgarten program.

Art Center

Snowman
Have the children work together to create snow figures or wintry scenes while listening to music. Provide plenty of extra felt items and shapes for the children to add details to their winter wonderlands. Ask the children to label their pictures or dictate to you.

Science Center

Touch
Provide a magnifying lens and small objects for the children to examine. They can draw their observations on sheets of paper. Invite children to write about their pictures.

Math Center

Circus
Making Patterns
Provide a collection of manipulatives for children to play with and sort out. They can draw pictures of the groupings or patterns they make.

Housekeeping Center

Collect magazines or advertising supplements from a newspaper. Cut out pictures of items that are familiar to the children, such as foods, pet foods, or cleaning supplies. Children can paste some of these pictures on note cards or other heavy paper to make shopping lists. They can "write" the names of the items they wish to "purchase" next to the pictures.

Down by the Bay
Plan a trip to a fruit farm, a vegetable market, or the produce department of a grocery store. Before your trip, have the children make predictions about foods they might see and add them to a shopping list.

Collect the cardboard boxes from a variety of prepackaged foods. Many cake, brownie, and casserole mixes that have illustrated directions. Cut the boxes to create flat pages that can be bound together or added to a three-ring notebook.

Grandpa, Grandpa
Encourage the children to count the items in the pail before making and enjoying their "tea."

Dramatic Play Center

Dramatic play provides many opportunities for children to see and use reading and writing in everyday life. Following are suggestions for various dramatic play centers.

Restaurant:
Who Says?
Set up an area with items typically found in a restaurant. Provide menus and small tablets for the "servers" to "write" orders.

Travel Agency:
Would You Like to Fly?
Provide travel brochures and ticket stubs. A computer keyboard or typewriter can be used to type in reservations. A telephone and tablet are useful for speaking to customers and recording their travel plans.

Pet Store or Veterinarian's Office:
A Cat's Day
What Kind of Dog Am I?
Provide magazine pictures of animals. Children can write the name of the animal next to its picture. Or, provide various stuffed or plastic toy animals and a scale to weigh them on. Children can "record" each animal's weight on a tablet of paper. A tablet can be used for the "pet store clerk" to order supplies or for the "veterinarian" to write instructions to care for a sick pet.

Career Center

I Could Be
In addition to the careers listed in the Stories-in-Motion section, consider the following:

Office Worker:
Let children type on an old typewriter or computer keyboard. Provide plain, white paper and assorted envelopes for children to "write" letters. Or, provide a nonworking telephone (with the cord removed) and a message pad for children to take phone messages. Add a telephone book to the center.

Auto Mechanic:
Include magazines or books about cars, such as owners' manuals. Add an appointment calendar for scheduling service appointments. Provide tablets for totaling the cost of "repairs."

Block Center

Before building a structure, the children can draw a "blueprint" to show what they will build. Or, they can sketch their structure after building it.

Making Patterns
The "Gotcha" Box
Children can create labels or signs for use in the block area. Children allowed to leave a partially built structure for a later playtime may want to write a "Please Don't Touch" sign to leave with the blocks.