EATING THE ALPHABET: Emergent Literacy in the Garden Room

EATING THE ALPHABET:

Emergent Literacy in the Garden Room

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One day during snack a child held up a pretzel: 

“It’s a P.  I took a bite and it’s a P."

I handed him the camera so he could take a photo of his pretzel P.

Then he stated:

“If I bite that bit, it will make a D!”

So he did, and then announced: 

 "Now it's a D."

Next he took a photo of this new letter.

The children at the snack table were clearly delighted with the transformation of the pretzel.

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That same day, out on the playground children were busy hunting for sticks, pebbles and leaves.  The bright autumnal weather had made the soil very dry and dusty and it wasn’t long before the children noticed that they could make marks in the dirt with their sticks.

 A block of wood became a “smoother” that could erase letters, wiping the dust flat to create even more letters.

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What we see in these little moments are examples of the power of emergent literacy – children are transforming objects into letters through a process of deconstructing an object (biting a pretzel), which is then constructed into something new (an alphabet letter), only to be re-constructed (a different alphabet letter). 

The dusty playground dirt is also a place of transformation as children create letters, erase them and create more letters. 

Children are masters of finding the potential in the mundane, whether it’s a pretzel or a small area of dirt.  These small creative acts are evidence of very powerful thinking.