Designed for Ages 4-7
Led by Miss Lindsey, our Literacy in the Leaves Program offers PreK-Grade 2 scientific literacy education in the first half of class with opportunities to apply literacy and language concepts to hands-on learning in the second half of class. Each week, children are introduced to scientific vocabulary and concepts in botany, ecology, meteorology and/or zoology. These concepts are then reinforced through learner-led, play-based experiential learning in our forest classroom.
In this program, children will have opportunities to:
In this program, children will have opportunities to:
- broaden their knowledge of concepts in botany, ecology, zoology, entomology and meteorology
- learn about important historical figures who made ground-breaking discoveries in environmental science, zoology, and entomology
- learn about reading strategies such as making connections and predictions, generating questions, and drawing conclusions
- develop phonemic awareness (the ability to notice individual sounds in words, count syllables, identify words that rhyme, for example)
- draw and/or write about their experiences in a nature journal
Late Spring I
6-Week Session
Wolf Hill Forest Classroom, Smithfield, RI
Saturdays 1:30-3:30pm
September 23 – October 28
Cost per child:
$125 for full session (20% discount)
$25 per drop-in class
In addition to class time in the forest, families will receive digital content including:
- “Words of the Week” cards for at-home repetition and reinforcement
- book recommendations for your child’s individual interests
- additional resources to go with each week’s theme
What is Literacy?
According to the National Council for Teachers of English, literacy is “the ability to read and write…how we communicate with others via reading and writing…speaking, listening, and creating” (NCTE). Literacy plays such an important role in our lives; it is how we “understand, interpret, create, and communicate,” tools we use for “meaningful engagement with society…how we articulate our experience in the world…express ourselves, learn, and grow” (NCTE).
For young children, literacy begins when they are able to recognize sounds and shapes of letters, connect to books that are read to them, make predictions, generate questions, and describe relationships between illustrations and the texts in which they appear.
Why Literacy in the Leaves?
As a career English teacher and reading specialist-in-training, I am well-versed in the research that shows the lifelong benefits that come from growing up in a literacy-rich environment. From my graduate work, I have learned that the best ways to ensure that children have strong reading comprehension and writing skills is to help them develop background knowledge in many different areas and to expose them to an expansive vocabulary. In short, the more enriching experiences children have when they are young, the stronger they will be as readers, writers, and thinkers.
In terms of literacy development, there comes a point when children switch from “learning to read” to “reading to learn;” this often occurs when children are between the ages of 7 and 9. At this point, children have mastered the ability to read sentences and are now reading to learn content–how living and non-living things are classified, the names of bones in our bodies, or how the pyramids in Egypt were built, for example. Vocabulary becomes “domain-specific,” meaning readers encounter words that are specific to a particular topic. For this reason, reading in the areas of science and social studies can become especially challenging, and are commonly where young readers struggle the most. Add to that the fact that reading requires sustained focus and attention and long periods with little physical activity, and you’ve got a tough situation for many learners.
However, what if there was a way that we could provide children with enriching, multi-sensory experiences that would broaden their background knowledge and vocabulary in the sciences? What if we could use hands-on learning to engage learners and support their literacy development? What would happen if they could touch, see, hear, smell, and feel vocabulary words and scientific concepts? What would happen if we encouraged children’s inclination to “think like scientists?” What would happen if they experienced the words they were learning “in real time?”
When my daughter Lydia–my “wild child” who loved being outside, digging in the dirt, splashing in puddles, and climbing on logs–started asking questions like “What happens to the leaves in winter?” “Where do the bees go?” and “Where is that worm’s mama?” I knew I had to create this program. It was all there waiting in the forest.