Early literacy skills: Print awareness activity

The other night I was reading this book to Ashlynn.

If you're not familiar with the "David" books, they center around the main character David who is mischievous and frequently getting into trouble.  

These books are great for early print awareness!  As you can see, the print is larger and is written as though a child wrote it.  Ashlynn kept pointing out all the capital letters she recognized from her name.  Her favorite was /S/ and she would declare, "Look!  That's in my name!"  This is great for transfer of early letter recognition skills. 

The sentences are typically short, and contain no more than maybe 5 words per sentence.  On some pages, the words are separated onto separate bits of paper (see below).  

The reason this is great is because you can get your child pointing to each word.  This doesn't mean they need to be reading the word.  They just begin to get an understanding that those combination of symbols denote an orthographic representation of a word.  Ashlynn can't read, but she is starting to get the hang of pointing to each word while she reads (from memorizing the book).

As a bonus, the stories are relatable and entertaining to your child, allowing you work on oral language as well.