Book Shopping

Pre-literacy and early literacy skills are infused throughout the Preschool day. These become the foundation of children’s later literacy development and include skills like print awareness, narrative skills, print motivation, letter knowledge, and vocabulary.

From read-alouds and discussion on the Nest, to hearing books during snack and lunch, children have the opportunity to hear stories. These inspire the imagination and lead to excitement for literature. Children have been engaging with books by themselves and with peers and teachers during activity time or after snack.

Book Shopping

In the Trees Class, each child has a Book Bag labeled with their name. They can read books from their bags during activity time, after snack time, and during quiet time!

Every Monday during Activity Time, children take turns working with a teacher to do Book Shopping. This is a time where they browse a set of books and exchange a book from their bags for a new one. During this selection process, children are working on many pre-literacy skills that form the foundation that they need as they develop as readers.

During Book Shopping, children get early practice with library skills such as browsing books and choosing literature that interests them or trying out a new genre.

Here are the steps…

Step 1: Bring your book bag to the Library.

Step 2: Pick one book to return and browse the titles for a new one.

Step 3: After choosing a book, read the pictures to the teacher.

Reading is a multi-faceted skill. Developing print awareness and motivation, building letter knowledge, as well as using pictures to help understand the trajectory of a story, are all skills that the children have been expanding on during book shopping each week. These are skills that children will draw on as they learn to decode texts, use inferencing, and grow their comprehension of stories.

The practice of reading the pictures allows children to develop the idea that pictures can help tell the story.