I-Spy Early Literacy!

We were fortunate enough at my library to purchase a new table for our early literacy center. Our old table had a permanent puppet stage attached to it. While kids love to put on a puppet show, they had grown pretty tired of it after a year.

The glorious new table

If you are building your early literacy space-- don't make anything permanent! Unless you're absolutely positive you will always want to have X in a certain spot, don't lock yourself in. It is much easier when you have some flexibility with the furniture.

We have already made the decision to not make anything permanent on our new table. Instead we will change out the activity monthly. This will encourage our little ones to keep visiting the center and hopefully give the parents new tips each time they visit.

This month I decided to make two I-Spy Bottles. These are super easy to make and some examples can be found here, here, or here.
 

Poison free rice

Unbreakable bottles...hopefully

Since we are a very public space, I decided to use plastic Powerade bottles. They are thicker than regular water bottles, but not so thick that a little kid can't pick it up. I also hot glued and taped the lid, just in case. Finally, because I'm a little neurotic, I made the rice with vinegar instead of rubbing alcohol. Worst case scenario- if rice does end up in a little one's mouth there is nothing toxic to worry about.

I decided to make one bottle all about colors. I included different colors of buttons and pom-poms. This makes it easy for the young ones to point out and talk about what they see. I put different objects in the second bottle for the preschoolers to interact with.

I also made a sign for each bottle describing the activity.

 

And of course, an early literacy center activity wouldn't be complete without a parent tip!

 Do you change the activities in your early literacy center?