Parent Stations at The Library

Play & Learn Spots

At Park Forest Public Library we are working on setting up "Play & Learn Spots" throughout the Youth Services Department. These stations are meant as a brief break for parents and prereaders to stop and play. They're designed to be "discovered." Each fun station has posted notes about "how to play." Why? Because each station teaches valuable early literacy skills to your child (as well as inviting your creativity.) We've posted things to do at the station, things to talk about with your child, and ways you can keep learning through play at home.

Stop and check out:

“P is For Pig”
How to play:
“Where is the missing letter? ”
· Pick a picture of something you know.
· What letter is missing? Can we find it?
Talk about:
“What sound does the letter ____ make?
“What other words do we know that start with the letter _____?” “Do you know a word that rhymes with _______?”
What we're learning:
Letter Knowledge
Phonological Awareness
Practice the sounds.
Hear how words sound alike and different.
Keep on learning at home:
· Make your own flash cards with familiar objects and people.
· Play match games with rhyming words — for example, cat and hat and bat.

“Road to Reading”
How to play:
“Let’s roll our cars down the street.”
Parent Tips
· Start with showing how to “drive” your car from right to left on the straight horizontal road.
· Now, drive left to right on the curved road.
· Drive from top to bottom on the vertical road.
· Finally, roll your car across the “ABC Lane.” Stop on a letter and call it out.
What we’re learning:
Print Awareness
Learning that writing in English follows basic rules such as flowing from top-to-bottom and left- to-right. Pointing to the words on a printed page.
Keep on learning:
· Point to words from left to right on page when reading aloud.
· Draw pictures on a page and “read” them from top to bottom.
· Practice tapping out toy piano keys from left to right.

“Alphabet Soup”
How to play:
“Let’s make a bowl of alphabet soup. ”
· Reach into the “soup mix” and pull out some letters of the alphabet.
· “What letter is this? Let’s put it in the bowl.”
· “Let’s find another letter.”
Talk about:
“Do we know any words that start with ___?”
“Can you find a _____?” “Your name starts with ____.”
What we’re learning:
Letter Knowledge
The knowledge that letters are different from each other and represent different sounds. Practice the sounds.
Keep on learning at home:
· Point out letters at home on a cereal box, the cover of a magazine, in the picture books you read aloud.
· Prepare alphabet pasta or alphabet cereal —play with them.