Environmental Print

The other day I was driving with the kids down the main part of town when we soon came to a four way stop. “Look, Mom,” William said to me. “Stop. It’s not our turn.” William was reading the stop sign ahead of us.

Many parents believe that children don’t learn to read until they experience formal lessons; however children are aware of the print around them from a very young age. Some experts say even as young as two years old a child can have a reading vocabulary of a hundred or more words. This is due to children actively observing the world around them and their parents engaging them in conversations about their environment, called environmental print. Reading familiar signs, billboards, product labels, and even logos that occur frequently and naturally in our environment is called reading environmental print and it is one of the earliest stages of emergent literacy.

Often times a child will readily engage in environmental print well before they “read” a book to themselves. Of course, part of reading environmental print is also using the visual context clues associated with the print, just as my son recognizes that the sign McDonalds is associated with french fries, that sign is an icon that holds meaning to him. Environmental print helps children understand how words are organized and used, and it teaches them that words hold meaning. Studies have found that children with more exposure to the print in their environmental come to kindergarten more prepared to formally learn to read.

Environmental print is a great asset for a stay-at-home parent to engage their children in reading at a very early age. Here are a few ways to encourage this emergent reading:

1. Point out environmental print and talk to your child about it.
2. Save examples of environmental print (example: boxed cereal and cracker logos) and put them in a binder for "reading"
3. Encourage your child to help you "read" junk mail or grocery fliers
4. Plat latter matching games where your child matched letters of the alphabet with those in familiar environmental print
5. Set up a "store" and allow your child to shop for their favorite pantry items
6. Use chart or construction paper to make sentences out of environmental print. (Example: I eat ____ for breakfast.)
7. Save two copies of each example of environmental print to make into a matching game
8. Sort environmental print by type (food, toys, places, etc.)
9. Paste environmental print on construction paper and play I Spy
10. Read books using environmental print (Signs, by David Bauer is a great book.)

Children thrive by experiencing success. Reading environmental print is one way to help your child experience success in reading before he even decodes his first words. This success will be motivating to both you and your child. Soon you will find that your child will rely less and less on the bright orange packaging of the goldfish crackers and more and more on the letters that make up the words of his favorite snack.

For more reading, check out these articles:

Environmental Print Awareness in Young Children, by Danielle Z. Kassow

What We Know About Environmental Print and Young Children, by Kirkland

This is also a great Google book:

Environmental Print in the Classroom: Meaningful Connections for Learning to Read, by Jennifer Prior and Maureen R. Gerard

The Importance of Fine Motor Development

The term “fine motor skills” seems sometimes to be used lightly without much thought to its actual meaning. Fine motor skills involve the small muscle control in the fingers, hands, and wrists. Development begins in infancy, when a baby grasps for her mother’s finger, clutches a toy, passes a stuffed animal from one hand to another, or demonstrates mastery of the pincher grasp by self-feeding. Toddlers then begin to stack blocks, link rings, turn pages in books, and button shirts and zip coats. Fine motor skills are obviously integral to the daily activities of a child and the coordination of these groups of small muscles is a contributor to a child’s success in school.

Many kindergarten readiness tests have a section to assess fine motor development. Skills such as the ability to cut with scissors, hold a pencil correctly, and tracing basic objects are evaluated. While kindergarten teachers agree that basic letter identification and number sense skills are helpful when entering school, some kindergarten teachers are now emphasizing fine motor development as even more important skills to have mastered before entering the formal classroom. Poor development of fine motor skills can be a factor in falling behind in reading and writing, not to mention the stigma that may be given by peers for a child not being able to perform basic tasks as efficiently as others the same age.

There are many opportunities within the home to reinforce fine motor development. Below is a list of basic activities that require very little preparation using regular household items.

1. Twisting lids onto empty water bottles
2. Pouring or spooning small objects (goldfish crackers, pebbles) from one container into another
3. Stringing beads, cereal or popcorn
4. Buttoning shirts and zipping coats
5. Opening and closing zip top baggies
6. Rolling (into ropes and balls) and shaping play dough
7. Sprinkling sugar or sprinkles on cookies
8. Using a squirt bottle to mist household plants
9. Controlling a computer mouse
10. Punching buttons on a small calculator


You may find that your child may be more interested in simply playing with the items you provide. This is ok. It is important to allow children to explore new items by encouraging play. Through exploratory play your child will discover new ways to use and manipulate materials, and soon you will find that your toddler has stopped eating the peanut butter cookie dough and has begun rolling it into balls and using a fork properly to make criss corsses.