Extension Activities for Children’s Books:



The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Ernst Campbell.

Alphabet House by Nancye Elizabeth Wallace.

Zoopa: An Animal Alphabet by Gianna Marino.

Other Alphabet Book Resources:

ABC Look at Me, A lift-and-Learn Book by Roberta Grobel Intrater. Photographs will entice

children to pick up this book often and learn new words that correlate with the alphabet.

Bruno Munari’s ABC by Bruno Munari. A classic.

Ellsworth’s Extraordinary Electric Ears and other amazing alphabet anecdotes by Valorie Fisher. An alphabet

book to compete with all the wonderfully popular I Spy books with photos of old toys.

Firefighters A to Z by Chris Demarest. An alphabetic look at a firefighter’s day.

Handsigns. A sign Language Alphabet by Kathleen Fain. Learn and teach American Sign Language alphabet.

I Love The Alphabet by Dar Hosta. A rhyming animal alphabet.

Museum ABC by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Letters of the alphabet are represented through a tour of art that shows readers different ways of looking at art. An accompanying index explains each picture.

Book Extension Activities:

Literacy/Language Development Extensions:

• Finger Letters: Teach American Sign Language to children to give them a second language and a view into the hearing impaired culture. Sharing letter sign knowledge with children provides a physical way to reinforce alphabet understanding.

What is being learned? Children learn to think about the components that make up each letter: Where does it curve? Where is it straight? They also get experience in controlling the little muscles in their hands and get a chance to be creative in their thinking. See ASL finger spelling chart. (Sher, 65).

• An idea for every day: Choose a word to teach like “book” and make enlarged signs for those letters to put on the wall until everyone has had a chance to learn it.

Create a Mystery Letter Box: Decorate a box and make a hole big enough to allow young hands to fit into. Fill the box with objects that start with the letter of the week in your class. Allow children to choose and tell you what the objects are, what letter they start with, what the letter sounds like and ever share a story about the object from their daily life.

What can be learned? Environmental print refers to letters or words that children see in the world around them, such as billboards, signs, labels, bumper stickers, cereal boxes, gum wrappers, fast food restaurant logos, banners and so on. Print that children see frequently becomes familiar to them, and they feel confident when reading it. Hiebert and Ham (1981) documented that “children who were taught to read and write with environmental print learned significantly more letter names and sounds than did children who learned alphabet letters without using environmental print.” The grocery store is the perfect place for children to see environmental print.

• Family Learning Activity: create a shopping list ~ Ask children to make a list with their parents using leftover packaging and go to the store to help find the items matching them to the items on the list, bringing their checked off list to share afterwards. Display the lists for everyone to compare and talk about their shopping trip experience. Or “shop” in your activity area/story room.

• Alphabet or Grocery List Class Book: Fill a three-ring binder with 26 clear cover sheets. Write the letters of the alphabet on separate pieces of paper and put each one inside a cover sheet. Ask each child to bring in a label from cans, boxes, ads, magazines, and other environmental print from home. Play a game of “seek and find,” searching through the letters in the binder to find the corresponding letter on their label. Let the children glue their label on the appropriate page. Add more pages as needed to the binder. This is a good ongoing project, too. Variation: Using grocery cart patterns, or make 26 “grocery carts” for a bulletin board the children to add to each day using left over clear lamination film to add a window into the basket where the children can see the different items in each cart. To incorporate these items into the book theme for a longer use time, have children chose items from carts to add to the book.

• Writing Prompt or Creative Play Exercise: Display a letter, or hand out a letter mounted on contrasting paper similar to those in the book and ask students to respond to the image from different angles and talk about what they see. Or use one of the other alphabet books you know as a story starter.

Art/Language Arts Extensions:

• Chalkboard Books: Invite children to practice writing letters on black paper with white or colored chalk. They may draw pictures that represent the letters as well, such as dog begins with d; tree begins with t, etc. It is a good idea to have examples of print script available so children can model their letters after the print script letters. Remember that as children are in the learning process of how to make letters, they are not going to be perfect. It is the practice that is important and very necessary.

Create an Alphabet Book for A Favorite Letter: Create letter books to share with an area community or school. Ask students to choose their favorite letter and create books as a group for all 26 letters to share with younger classes, a community centers, or school library. A great service learning project to help create understanding for how we learn.

Science Extension:

• Alphabet Trail: Materials: On a long roll of paper (or 26 sheets taped together), ask children write out the letters of the alphabet starting with A. They can use different-color markers and make letters in different patterns. Letters can be solid, feature patterns (dots, stripes, checkers, rainbows) or other images. Lay the finished product down on the floor and play these games: 1) Jump or hop forward, backward, or sideways from letter to letter in order. 2) Start on one letter and jump to a letter named, such as from A to F. 3) Start at A and walk to the letter named with eyes closed (memory test: how far is each letter is from A?). 4) Guess how many steps it takes to get from one letter to another then walk to check accuracy of guesses. 5) Jump to the letters of the child’s name or any other word.

What is being learned? Learning the order of the alphabet with their bodies is a kinesthetic way to stronger internal awareness of this sequence that reinforces memory learning.

Body Letters: Players can form teams, work with partners, or work individually to form a letter with their bodies while other players guess what the letter is. For example, four children make the letter E: one for the vertical line and three for each of the horizontal lines. Or, a player arranges other players to form a letter and asks others to guess what the letter is. (Sher, 66-67).

Letter Hopscotch: Make a hopscotch diagram using masking tape, outside on asphalt or cement using chalk, or in the dirt using a stick. If you are using chalk or dirt, it is easier to change the letters and play again. Mark letters in the spaces. Have each player in turn throw a marker, to the letter you or another player names. The player then has to jump or hop to all the other letters, leading up to the one with the marker on it, pick up the marker, and jump to the end and then back to the starting point.

What is being learned? Children learn to begin to recognize letters and to distinguish upper-from lowercase. They also get practice in balance when they hop and in motor planning when they jump from square to square. (Sher, 58-59).



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