Building Phonemic Awareness In Kindergarten

Concepts of Print and Play
This week we are playing the train game which I found at the Balanced Literacy website. To prepare for the lesson, I made little construction paper freight cars and laminated them. I stocked up on file cards and sticky notepaper.
During read aloud, I introduced  the simple big book, I Like Me. Afterwards we talked about the story and then I asked them what they noticed about the letters on the page. They talked with a partner and then I asked them to share while I wrote down their comments. One thing that T. noticed was that each group of letters had a space between them.    

 













I used his observation and compared it to a train and said that just like a freight car, each group of letters was called a word, and that each word had it's own space and meaning.

Then I introduced The Train Game.Each day I will ask a closed question and their first classroom job will be to write their answer on sticky paper and post it on the t-chart. This will help them notice that each word has it's own space and also practice printing yes or no. We will use the same routine that we used for self check in so that they are successful right away.

I also included it as a game during centres by providing a tub with file cards, painter's tape and post-it's so that they can ask their own question and then survey friends. 
What playful activities do you do for concepts of print?