Spells, stories and scribbles!
Did you know there are four strands to supporting your child’s Early Literacy? These are:
- Early writing
- Oral language
- Books
- Environmental print
For young children, Halloween can provide multiple opportunities for learning and development in all of these strands!
Top tips:
- An outdoor walk in your local area is an opportunity to support your child’s oral language by introducing new vocabulary and concepts, such as: street name, costume, spooky, pumpkin, witch, day time, night time, moonlight, shadow – encourage your child to name sights they can see and listen out for sounds they can hear
- Environmental print is all around us, so whilst on your Halloween walk point out familiar print to your child, such as: shop names, road signs, street signs, post boxes, telephone boxes, pedestrian crossing, bus stops and timetables, directional signs, safety instructions at parks – see how may you can find!
- Books are a fantastic way to support your child’s early literacy: There are many Halloween themed stories you can share together – or ‘Martha Maps It Out’ by Leigh Hodgkinson is a great way to introduce maps to your child and bring your Halloween story map to life (see section below) – borrow the book from your local Essex Library this Halloween!
Create a Halloween Story Map to develop your child’s early writing skills:
A story map is a simple drawing that can show the places you visited, the order you went in and what happened along the way! It will support your child to develop an understanding of sequencing, their own storytelling, and their creativity skills.
- Talk through the journey together: start by chatting about the night, such as – where did you go? What did you see? What did it look like?
- Draw your route: talking about the streets, houses, events and the spooky things you saw, encourage your child draw these using pens, crayons etc – to make this really exciting, you could use the back of unwanted wrapping/wall paper you may already have at home, to give your child a BIG mark making experience!
- Add details: encourage your child to draw their favourite moments, whether it be sweets, pumpkins or costumes – you could challenge older children to write short sentences/words, whilst younger children can tell you the words to write down
