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This Reading Mama

Green with Literacy

By thisreadingmama Leave a Comment

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day and upcoming Earth Day, I thought I’d share some ways we go “green” with literacy:

Cereal box puzzles-not sure where I originally got this idea, but one place I saw it just recently was Chasing Cheerios.

Make a book cover using cereal boxes.  Cut out the dimensions you want from the cereal box then cover in scrapbook paper, hole punch, link rings, and you have a nice, sturdy cover for a book.

Reuse the bubble wands from the big containers of bubbles as pointers for reading.

Reuse plastic bottle caps from water or Coke bottles as a “movable alphabet“.  I like to use the white ones for the consonants and red ones for the vowels.

I first saw this on education.com, so I started collecting.  Then I saw some more ideas on Confessions of a Homeschooler and 1+1+1=1.  I combined all of that info to create a way for the boys to enjoy playing and working with letters to make words.

Just a note: These pictures came from the back of Words Their Way.  Years ago I copied, colored, mounted, and laminated all the pictures.  I then wrote the word on the back of all the cards for students to self-check their work.

  • Reuse the Cottenelle wipe containers for literacy manipulatives (like magnetic letters, crayons, or bottle cap letters).
  • Reuse boxes of food in your play kitchen.  My mom did this with us as kids.  This serves for some good environmental print.

Yes, MBug is crawling…

…and into everything!

  • Cut out pictures and letters from old magazines to make a collage or to use as pictures in a book.

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~Becky

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Filed Under: Learn to Read Tagged With: recycling, teaching reading

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Hi! I’m Becky, a homeschooling mama with 4 blessings who keep me on my toes {and knees}. Before homeschooling, I was a classroom teacher (M.Ed.) and reading tutor. Read more about me here.

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