Letters, Sounds, & Environmental Print

Jackson has become obsessed with letters and sounds lately and has become quite proficient in the sounds each letter makes. I had no idea that he was reading Environmental Print as we drove around in the car until today!

"Children are surrounded by Environmental Print. It is on store signs, road signs, billboards, fast food places, boxes, wrappers, etc. Many children know their favorite cereal, candy bar and restaurant and they can recognize its logo. We can take advantage of their natural interest to learn more about letters, sounds and words by using the print they see all around them. Reading print from the world around us is one of the beginning stages of literacy development. The letters, numbers, shapes, and colors found in logos for products and stores such as McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Coke, and Campbell's soup all provide opportunities for emerging readers to interact with print and the written word in their own environment. We see Environmental Print everywhere, we see logos and signs in our daily lives but as adults we don't consider it real "reading". However, Environmental Print is the first print a child learns to "read"."

Jackson loves to play with his letters, and his favorite letter is T. He's learned to spot it anywhere and everwhere it pops ups! We were driving to swim lessons and passed a sign that said, "Welcome to Gilbert!" He started screaming, "T T T T T!" I had to look around for a minute before I saw the sign and realized he'd found a T! Then I took him to Harkins Theatres to pre-buy movie tickets for me and Eric and again Jackson saw the T and starting making the T sound!! I was so excited I started crying! Nothing makes a reading teacher more happy than to see a child excited about reading!!