“Literacy is a process by which one expands one’s knowledge of reading and writing in order to develop one’s thinking and learning for the purpose of
understanding oneself and the world. This process is fundamental to achieving competence in every educational subject…literacy is a necessary foundation for educational achievement.” Enclopedia.com
Literacy involves spoken and written language skills and the ability to read and write.
It’s never too early to start getting your child involved with literacy activities. There are lots of fun opportunities to support early literacy development. Talking, singing, creative play, playing sound, letter, and word games, reading, writing, and playing educational games with your child are great ways to set up a good literacy foundation. You don’t need lots of time for literacy activities. Just a few minutes a day can make a big impact! The key is to use different times and engaging opportunities to help your child learn……..Literacy activities for preschoolers should be fun!
Literacy and Ten Simple Ways To Engage, Play And Teach Your Child!
*Literacy Sensory Bins– Sensory Bins are simple to make and are absolutely guaranteed to capture a child’s interest. Find a sturdy container (a clear plastic bin with a lid works great). Add some sensory filler such as dried peas, rice, packing peanuts, cotton balls, fake grass, leaves, etc. For a Matching Letters and Sounds bin, use an assortment of plastic upper and lower case letters, letter flash cards, object picture cards, and/or mini objects to match letter sounds you are working on. Give your child a letter of the alphabet (written on a card) and have them find all the letters in the bin that match that letter. Then ask them to find objects and pictures of things that begin with that sound. For extreme fun, use a set of Alphabots transformer letters in the bin!.For extra sensory play and learning, use Play-Doh and letter stamps.
*Play-Doh– Help your child make numbers and letters out of Play-Doh. Use it to spell simple words and your child’s name. Use alphabet and letter stamps and cookie cutters to press out letters and words. Play-Doh offers several fun activity sets for letters and sounds.
*LEGOs- Kids Love LEGOs! Let your child practice making alphabet letters by giving them a sheet of paper with a letter drawn on it. Have your child use LEGO bricks to outline the letter. Next, see if they can make each letter and spell their name using their LEGOs. LEGO makes a LEGO DUPLO Play with Letters Set to support early literacy.
*Books– Use alphabet books to teach letters and have your child point out the words that begin with each letter. Read books with rhyming and repetition. Examples: The Cat in the Hat, There’s a Hole in the Log on the Bottom of the Lake, Nothing Rhymes With Orange, Jamberry. Show your child how to hold a book and help turn the pages. Touch the words as you read together, and discuss the characters and the story. Ask questions about what you read together. Talk about the pictures and what is happening in each one. Bluebee Pals are super motivational tools to engage your child in digital books!
*Nursery Rhymes and Songs– A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words. Nursery rhymes teach your child language, vocabulary, rhyme, repetition and rhythm. Rhyming is a precursor for early literacy skills. Sing nursery rhymes to play with words and sounds. Example: Humpty Dumpty, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; The Alphabet Song; Three Little Kittens.
*I Spy– Help your child learn to recognize and listen for sounds. Example: “I spy with my little eye something that begins with s-s-s. What do you think I see that starts with that sound?” You can also play I Spy with books by asking your child to find sounds on the pages and in words. Example: “Can you touch all the f letters or words with f on this page?” For language, Play I Spy in the grocery store, too! Example: “I spy a yellow fruit“ or “I Spy something sweet” or “I Spy something that is crunchy”.
*Puppets– Puppets are great to use for oral language development with preschoolers. Use puppets to tell or re-tell a story, ask questions, and take turns to engage in conversations. Puppets are easily found at Dollar Stores.
*Pretend Play– Children love to role play and play-pretend! These activities offer rich learning opportunities. You can set up a shop, your own restaurant, Doctor’s office, Vet office or school classroom and have creative fun! Children can make signs, forms, lists and menus and have fun while playing with literacy. Play-Doh has learning sets which are excellent for encouraging pretend play. Sets include kitchen, barber shop, dentist, sweet shop, and more.
*Treasure Hunt- Have a Letter Treasure Hunt by hiding alphabet cards or letters around the house. Tell your child a letter sound to look for and have your child say the letter, say the sound it makes, find it and bring it to you. Have your child find something at home that starts with that letter.
*Educational Games– Games are great fun for early learning and literacy as they involve oral language, conversation, vocabulary, sharing, following directions, Wh-questions, turn-taking, and much more. If you can find literacy based games that is even better. Children love playing games with their parents and peers! Examples: Go Fish; Old Maid, Candyland; Peaceable Kingdom Alphabet Bingo! Letter Learning Game for Kids; I Spy Dig In; BOHS Literacy Wiz Fun Game; Carson-Dellosa Publishing Time to Rhyme; The Learning Journey: Match It! Bingo – Picture Word – Reading Game for Preschool and Kindergarten; Learning Resources Alphabet Soup Sorters; and Magnetic Alphabet Letters And Numbers.
Literacy: For even more ideas, please visit the following sites:
Bluebee Pals easily connect to storybook apps via Bluetooth to make storytelling come to life! Your Bluebee Pal will “read” any connected story, with natural head and mouth movements! Children become immediately more engaged and attentive!
Reading to your child daily helps develop vocabulary, attending, sentence construction, grammar, pronoun usage, social-skills, turn-taking, imagination, creativity, sequential thought, emotions, wh-questions, comprehension, receptive/expressive language skills, critical thinking and problem solving, and so much more!
Reading to Young Children
One of the most language rich and meaningful learning opportunities that parents (and educators) can give their children. Many natural educational interactions occur while reading by talking about the subject matter, elements of the story, questioning about the story, and through practicing story retelling.
What is Epic?
Kids’s Books and Videos is a wonderful digital library for children ages 12 and under. With instant, unlimited access to 35,000 high-quality ebooks, audiobooks, learning videos and quizzes, kids can learn, explore their interests and develop a love of reading!
“Epic!’s award-winning service includes a wide variety of high-quality books and learning videos from leading publishers likeScholastic, National Geographic, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Smithsonian and many more…- It’s an unlimited library your kids can take anywhere!” https://www.getepic.com/books
The library contains well-known books and series, such as Pete the Cat, Fancy Nancy, Biscuit, National Geographic Kids, Clifford and lots more! It offers picture books, chapter books, early readers, audiobooks, and videos. It even includes Spanish and Chinese books.
Key Features Include:
35,000 books and learning videos with hundreds more added weekly
Personalized recommendations for each child based on their reading level and interests
Online and offline reading (you can save books to read offline)
A reading log to track reading progress
Access to Epic! on almost any device
Includes comprehension quizzes and learning videos
FREE for elementary school teachers!!!
After a 30 day free trial, it is $7.99 a month for parents
Users can easily search according to interests
Highlighted text option
Professional narration
Filter books by reader age, AR Level, Lexile Measure, fiction and non fiction
Pairs easily with Bluebee Pals!
Epic! – Kids’ Books and Videos by Epic! Creations Inc
*Set aside daily time reading time. Find somewhere quiet without any distractions.
*Let the Child Pick the Book! One excellent way to get young children involved in the reading aloud process is to allow them to select the book you read.
*Don’t Be Afraid of Wordless Picture Books! When reading a wordless picture book, ask the children questions such as:
• What do you think is happening here? (comprehension)
• What makes you think that? (inferring)
• What do you think will happen next? (predicting)
• Why? (vocabulary and oral language)
*Start Small. The younger the child the shorter the attention span.
In the beginning, choose shorter books or books that are not too text-heavy. Then, as you notice their attention spans getting longer, you can start reading longer books.
*Read It Again! Reading the same book multiple times can really help children develop language skills and improve reading comprehension.
*Read Aloud to Big Kids, too! Reading aloud isn’t just for young children who can’t read on their own yet. Kids usually listen on a higher level than they read.
*Explain Some New Words. Explain a few of the words your children may not have heard before – no more than half. Each time you re-read the book, you can explain different new words to build vocabulary.
*Point to the pictures and encourage your child to talk about the book. Talking about the characters and their situations helps children understand relationships and is an excellent way for you to get to know each other or discuss difficult issues.
*Give your child plenty of response time. Ask them what will happen next, how a character might be feeling or how the book makes them feel.
*Relate the story or illustrations to something your child knows. This will help them make connections to their own life experiences.
*Above all else…make reading fun and enjoy the time together with your child!
What are Life Skills? Life skills are behaviors that enable individuals to adapt and deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life. In terms of early development, these are often called “learning to learn skills” which can be developed through intentional activities. There are many such skills, but core life skills, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) include the following:
Self-awareness
Empathy
Critical thinking
Creative thinking
Decision making
Problem Solving
Effective communication
Interpersonal relationship
Coping with stress
Coping with emotion
The Bluebee Pals app is a fun and easy way to begin working on many of these skills with young children. Children learn best through play!
In the Bluebee Pals app there are 5 colorful and interactive rooms to explore with your child. By talking about, asking questions, and encouraging free play, you can focus on and reinforce many early learning and life skills.https://www.bluebeepals.com/bluebee-pals-app/
Bedroom: Discuss bedtime routines with your child. What routines do you have? What do you wear to bed? Talk about things that are found in a bedroom (vocabulary, categorization skills), practice listening, choose your favorite color, and learn the meaning of “on/off”. Ask the child to describe his/her own bedroom.
Bathroom:Discuss your bathroom routines. Practice listening and following instructions, practice brushing teeth, talk about washing hands, learn to recognize hot/cold water, on/off, and categorize things that are found in a bathroom.
Kitchen: Discuss things that are found in a kitchen. Do you see something in the Bluebee kitchen that you have in your kitchen (critical thinking). Discuss recycling, follow directions, name foods and categorize them. What are your favorite kinds of foods? What vegetables are green? Yellow? Red?
Living room: What kinds of things are found in a living room? Name the things in the Bluebee living room. What is in your living room? What kinds of things can you do in your living room? How can you help your parents keep the living room tidy?
Playroom: The playroom contains mini-games for free play. Tap on an item in the room to play an educational game.
Balloons: Match colors to foods, talk about different types of food groups and categorize fruits vs vegetables.
Robot. Practice sequencing, critical thinking, following directions and problem solving skills while building a robot.
Voice recorder: Listen and follow directions to learn to use a microphone to record your own voice, or Bluebee Pal. Use problem solving skills to learn how to record and listen to the sounds around you. Can you talk in a happy voice? In a sad voice? In a soft voice?
Truck: Name the kinds of trucks you see as you slide them around the racetrack. Which one is the smallest? The largest? Can you put them in order from smallest to largest?
Ice cream truck: Seek and find the hidden Bluebee Pals on their island, then match them to their chairs on the beach. Can you name all of the Bluebee Pals? Can you match them to their names?
Construction hat: Dress up your favorite Bluebee Pal and talk about the different occupations they represent. What would you like to be when you grow up? What jobs do your parents do?
Maze: Practice thinking and problem solving skills as you complete a maze. How many ways are there to get out?
White board: Practice naming the letters of the alphabet and their order. What can you name that starts with the letter D? What letters are in your name?
Tips—When working with your child and the Bluebee Pal app, focus on the following areas to maximize language and learning skills:
* Make choices
* Talk about grouping similar items into categories
* Assist your child in following directions
* For literacy skills, help your child learn to recognize sounds and letters
* Talk about daily living skills and routines including hygiene, cooking, cleaning, brushing teeth, bath time, and bed time.
* Find action words and talk about them. Make a sentence with action words such as playing, brushing, sleeping, bathing, washing.
* Talk about the items in each room and what they are used for to build vocabulary skills.
* Practice sequencing the tasks in the app, such as taking a bath, brushing your teeth, getting ready for bed.
* Talk about how your child feels when it is time to eat, time to take a bath, time to clean up, or time for bed.
* Practice negation while you are working with your child, such as “Don’t forget to turn off the light” or “Don’t forget to brush his teeth all the way”. Which foods are not red? What things do not belong in the kitchen?
* Ask questions to improve inferencing skills, such as “How do you think he got so dirty? or What do you think he likes to eat for lunch”?
Music is a magical tool while working with children having speech and language difficulties! Music therapy is a well-established technique for using musical interaction to help individuals with a wide range of cognitive and emotional challenges to improve their ability to function. By interacting with those on the autism spectrum, the use of music can build skills, lower anxiety, and even develop new communication skills.
What is music therapy? According to the American Music Therapy Association: Music therapy is an evidence-based, allied health profession that uses music interventions to accomplish individualized goals. Through musical responses, a board-certified music therapist assesses emotional well-being, physical health, social functioning, communication abilities, and cognitive skills. Specifically regarding communication, music therapists are trained to adapt elements of music to promote effective expressive and receptive communication skills. Music therapy interventions focus on enhancing social, communicative, motor/sensory, emotional, behavior, and academic/cognitive functioning.https://www.bluebeepals.com/autism/
*A speech language pathologist and qualified musical therapist can work alongside each other collaboratively to build individuals’ skills.
Advantages of Music Therapy:
Communication: Music can aid in speech development and production, and is a perfect medium to encourage and aid in non-verbal communication, too.
Multi sensory: Musical interventions engage multiple senses and appeal to sensory strengths and needs.
Whole Brain Processing: Music is processed in both hemispheres of the brain; therefore, when engaged in musical tasks, many regions of the brain are stimulated simultaneously. The use of music supports mental, emotional and cognitive development. Kids with Autism can benefit significantly from this form of therapy.
Socialization: Musical intervention goes hand in hand with social skills. Turn taking, peer interactions, following directions and engagement can be supported by music. Music therapy helps autistic children learn to relate to us and to others.
Improves Behavior: Restlessness, aggression and throwing tantrums can be reduced through the use of music. Music helps remove various mental blocks, as well as stress and anxiety levels. As the same music is played in a repetitive as well as in a prolonged manner, this can bring about significant changes in social behavior and overall cognitive ability.
Music is Fun: Music is fun, safe, appealing, motivational, and enjoyable! This makes it perfect for therapy. It is fun and engaging for kids with autism to listen and learn through music. Because music is motivating and engaging, it may be used as a natural “reinforcer” for desired responses.
Research-based:
Music therapy interventions are informed by research evidence and incorporate many of the identified ASD-specific evidence-based practices.
Music therapy services for young children with ASD are very effective for improving communication, interpersonal skills, personal responsibility, and play.
Music therapy interventions may elicit joint attention; enhance auditory processing, other sensory-motor, perceptual/motor, or gross/fine motor skills and identify and appropriately express emotions.
Music therapy interventions based on family-centered practice may increase social engagement in the home environment and community.
Music therapy interventions using musically adapted social stories may modify target behavior and teach new skills.
Bluebee Pals and Music in Speech Therapy: Working in collaboration with a music therapist, Bluebee Pals are a great tool to use when incorporating music into speech therapy to address communication skills. Use one-on-one or invite a Bluebee Pal into peer groups to practice skills. Paired with musical and rhyming apps and videos, Bluebee Pals offer children a special learning friend who makes communication skills practice fun…and therefore, more meaningful. By “speaking and singing” the audio in connected apps, a Bluebee Pal adds just the right touch of warmth and humanity to motivate children. Just connect your Bluebee Pal and get started!http://bluebeepals.com
Suggested Apps and Resources:
Toddlers Nursery Rhymes Bundle- Kids Songs Collection by PlaneTree Family Productions
Grab a Bluebee Pal and have fun exploring these FREE educational apps with your children. There are oodles and oodles of educational videos, shows, games, goodies and activities to explore. There is something for everyone! Take plenty of time to explore your favorite PBS shows, videos, and games in this HUGE collection of activities! These apps contain safe, educational videos, games, and TV.
PBS KidsVideo- Watch all your favorite PBS Kids shows anytime, as well as live stream educational videos and shows to help your child learn and grow. There are new videos each week. Watch full episodes of Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Super Why, Curious George, Odd Squad, and more! For ages 3-8. PBS KIDS Video by PBS KIDS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pbs-kids-video/id435138734
PBS Kids Games-There are over 100 free school games for ages 2 through 8 for discovery, exploration and learning. The games focus on science, math, reading, and creativity. There are mazes, puzzles, coloring, dress-up, and more activities. Learn ABCs, shapes, reading, and math skills. PBS KIDS Games by PBS KIDS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pbs-kids-games/id1050773989
PBS Parents Play and Learn by PBS’ first app designed specifically for parents, PBS Parents Play & Learn provides more than a dozen games parents can play with their kids, each themed around a familiar location – including the garden, the grocery store, a restaurant, the kitchen, and many more.The app is designed to build on a child’s natural curiosity about his or her everyday world and to encourage dialogue between kids and parents. Each game comes with a parent note that provides information about the math and literacy skills woven into the game and suggestions for effective ways to interact with a child while playing the game to maximize the learning experience.https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pbs-parents-play-and-learn/id605542914
Play and Learn Science by PBS This is a suite of 15 educational kids games to develop experimentation and early science skills. Learn core scientific concepts while developing problem solving skills. Help the thirsty dog get some water, dress-up for the correct weather, find out which objects will float, and more. Great for preschool to kindergarten ages. Play and Learn Science by PBS KIDS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/play-and-learn-science/id1300256105
The Cat in the Hat Builds That by PBS KIDS features 5 educational STEM games for preschool and kindergarten kids, focusing on key science concepts. Build bridges, explore friction with slides, sort objects, create musical instruments, mix colors, and more! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-cat-in-the-hat-builds-that/id1332796551
Bluebee Pals are versatile educational tools for the classroom! Indeed, they can be used in a variety of both tech and non-tech ways to support early foundational skills. Students love to use them both ways as classroom learning partners! Here are a few ideas to get you started.https://www.bluebeepals.com/inclusive-curriculum/
Reading Skills:Tech-Use Bluebee Pals to connect with any book or reading app. Let your students enjoy a digital book while your Bluebee Pal reads aloud to them. This is also a great activity for group time. Students can follow along with the text (books with high-lighted text are especially nice). Students can also create their own books and record in their own voices, with their Bluebee Pal reading in the student’s voice. They love to hear their voices and this gives them excellent feedback on their oral reading skills.
Non-tech–Let your students practice their oral reading skills by reading out loud to their Bluebee Pal buddy. We often break into small groups for oral reading practice. This is a great way for students to practice reading and intonation skills, and to gain reading confidence. Students can also orally practice reading and spelling their weekly vocabulary words with their Bluebee Pal buddy.
Language Skills: Tech-There are a multitude of apps available to practice language skills such as sequencing, categorizing, grammar, wh-questions, sentence construction, and basic concepts, to name a few. Connect your favorite Bluebee Pal to each app as your students learn! It really helps to engage them!
Non-tech-When teaching early skills, use a friendly Bluebee Pal and have a play-pretend tea party! You can practice most of the same skills without connecting Bluebee. Practice taking turns, using pronouns (ex. Give the cup to him) positional and basic concepts (ex. Put the spoon next to Bluebee Pal), wh-questions (ex. Who has the blue plate?), categories (ex. Give all the red cookies to Bluebee Pal, Show Bluebee all the things you can eat). You can easily model and imitate your targeted language goals with students and Bluebee Pals in a group setting.
Articulation/Speaking Skills: Tech- Connect your Bluebee Pal to articulation and phonics practice apps to help your students practice and learn articulation skills. Your Bluebee Pal will say the sounds, words, phrases and sentences out loud for the students to practice, or can “speak” in your students’ voices when they use an in-app recording feature to capture their practice productions.
Non-tech: Have your students practice their sound production skills out loud with their Bluebee Pal!Say a word or sentence with the target sound. If they say it correctly, the student earns a point. If it is incorrect, give a point to Bluebee! Have them practice until they earn Bluebee’s points back! Let them also practice self-monitoring skills by taking their own data as they practice with their articulation picture cards and a Bluebee Pal.
Listening Skills: Tech–Connect your Bluebee Pal to a favorite listening comprehension skills app to practice listening for information with your snuggly friend. Additionally, it is essential that children are read to on a daily basis in their early years to foster listening, reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and cognitive skills. Tales2go is a wonderful audio book app that offers thousands of age appropriate selections for listening pleasure!
Non-tech-Play a listening game with your favorite Bluebee Pal. If the student listens and answers questions correctly, he earns a point. If he is incorrect, Bluebee gets the point. Who can collect the most points? Students enjoy playing with and learning with Bluebee Pals!
Social Skills:Tech-It’s tons of fun to connect your Bluebee Pal to your smartphone to practice greetings, real conversations and taking listening and speaking turns!
Practice your favorite social skills game apps and create and narrate your own social skills stories with your Bluebee Pals!
Non-Tech-Invite your favorite Bluebee Pals to your social skills group (non-connected). Students can practice social greetings, conversational turn-taking, questioning, play-pretend skills, and more, as they “teach” Bluebee the social rules!
Connected or not, Bluebee Pals offer great educational value in the classroom!
Literacy and Ten Simple Ways To Engage, Play And Teach Your Child!
Literacy: For even more ideas, please visit the following sites:
Music is a magical tool while working with children having speech and language difficulties! Music therapy is a well-established technique for using musical interaction to help individuals with a wide range of cognitive and emotional challenges to improve their ability to function. By interacting with those on the autism spectrum, the use of music can build skills, lower anxiety, and even develop new communication skills.
Communication
Bluebee Pals and Music in Speech Therapy
Grab a Bluebee Pal and have fun exploring these FREE educational apps with your children. There are oodles and oodles of educational videos, shows, games, goodies and activities to explore. There is something for everyone! Take plenty of time to explore your favorite PBS shows, videos, and games in this HUGE collection of activities! These apps contain safe, educational videos, games, and TV. 
Bluebee Pals are versatile educational tools for the classroom! Indeed, they can be used in a variety of both tech and non-tech ways to support early foundational skills. Students love to use them both ways as classroom learning partners! Here are a few ideas to get you started.
GoSequencing by Smarty Ears: 
Tales2Go by Tales2Go, Inc.: 
