Using Environmental Print in Your Teachable Moments

“S-T-O-P spells Stop!”  Repeating this sentence every time you pass a stop sign will help your children learn the rules of the road, and help to create a teachable moment.  Eventually, when your child sees the sign and recites the sentence, you will have your chance to point out the letters, practice the sounds separately and possibly even pick you little one up to touch each letter.  Expanding his learning in this way will allow your child to fully experience the letters and sounds in meaningful way.

Environmental Print is the practical application of print in a child’s daily life.  It is the logos and the street signs  children see each day. This is not reading in the sense that your 2 year old could recognize each letter individually and sound them out. But it is emergent reading because your child is recognizing the picture and associating words with the letters that make that picture.

Use KinderJam’s environmental print scavenger hunt to see just how much environmental print your child can already "read".  What can your child recognize just from the logos on the page?  If the logos used here are not regular occurrences in your daily life, make your own poster at home using wrappers and pictures of things you come across often.  Make sure the whole word is on the wrapper (example: The word Boston Red Sox and not just the trademark B) so the child gets used to seeing the entire word.

After getting into the habit of pointing out print in your daily life such as observing stop signs and over pronouncing the J in Jamba Juice, your child will be ready to learn more. 

Here are some ideas:

When you come across an S while reading a book, say to your child, “That is the same letter on the stop sign! What letter is that?”  

You can cut out all the J’s from the used Jamba Juice cups and glue them on a paper.  You and your child can think of words that start with J and write those words on the page, using the cut out J’s as the first letter.  Make up a tongue twister or use random words.

As your child’s reading skills grow, cut out the letters from logos in chunks or individually.  Use the CH from a Cheerios box and the IN from a Wheat Thins to spell a new word.  

Encouraging reading in daily life is a great way to bring letters and their sounds to life.  Happy Reading!