A bin that students can pull to use for literacy work during centres is extremely valuable to a classroom, as students can find ways to incorporate reading and writing into their daily activities outside of structured lessons!

“Letter Wands,” or popsicle sticks with plastic letters glued to the end, are a great way to engage students with beginning letter sounds, as they can use the wands (chosen at random) to then take around the room and touch to an object that has the same beginning letter sound. This can be done independently or in groups to create some fun competition and assessment as a group as peers hold each other accountable.

Sight words are some of the most important foundations of literacy learning in kindergarten, and some games can be used to most effectively provide students with more understanding of these words. Games like “memory” where students flip sight words over to find matches or “sight word slap” where students race to find a match that they read out loud are wonderful ways to solidify learning for students.  

Students can have literary independance using simple household objects, like dried beans with letters written on them, to challenge students to create words out of beans chosen. This can be done with almost anything, coins, lids, fabric, etc, which provides teachers with effective and cost-effective options for their literacy bins.

Apart from games and activities regarding letter recognition and sounds, it’s very easy and convenient to ask students to create stories out of images of just about anything, magazine clips, or even other prompt words. Students can record these “stories” in journals or slips of paper, and can differentiate depending on needs with writing, labelling, and drawing pictures.