Hi, Miss Julie

During this session of beginning reader storytime, we’ve been focusing on writing. We wrote on dry erase boards, created an alphabet book where we wrote words, made letters out of pretzel twists, and this week we wrote in shaving cream, which was, frankly, just a whole lot of fun in addition to being a great outside of the box literacy activity. For the entire 15-20 minutes we played and wrote in the shaving cream, the kids and parents were laughing up a storm. (If you do this, you might want to remind parents to keep their shaving cream at home extra out of reach for a little bit, lest it tempt their kids.) Next week we’re going to be writing in rice, which is another great way for kids who aren’t great with conventional writing materials to practice writing.

Even with all of the typing we do, handwriting is still an important skill in our culture that has many benefits beyond simply communicating. Writing is also one of the five Every Child Ready to Read skills. How do you foster writing in your library?