FLEPs: Family Literacy Engagement Packets

Source: East Texas Literacy Council, Longview, TX

1. Introduction:

Each Family Literacy Engagement Packet (FLEP) includes an activity to be completed by parents and their children. The primary purpose of these activities is to promote family literacy through the development of quality and educationally productive parent-child interaction time. These activities encourage reading and writing by adults and children, but are specifically designed to promote and reinforce the development of early childhood pre-reading skills and concepts.

These activities have been designed for parents and children to complete together within the context of a class or workshop based on the family literacy model. Each FLEP is designed to meet specific educational objectives. Instructors should thoroughly understand activity objectives and be able to explain and demonstrate each activity to parents. Parents must understand they are not to do the activity for their children but with them, so that both parties actively participate in the process. These activities also provide guided practice for the parent to learn to interact with their child within a positive and structured environment. While the majority of activities have been designed for in-class use, several must be completed at home. This gives the parent the opportunity to transfer skills learned in class to the home and helps reinforce that they are their child’s first teacher and the home is their child’s first classroom.

2. General Skills Addressed

Each activity targets the development of a variety of general skills. These skills enhance the acquisition of the skills needed to develop reading ability.

  • the development of fine motor skills and coordination
  • eye-hand coordination
  • visual discrimination
  • auditory discrimination
  • recall
  • memory development
  • concepts of
  • matching
  • grouping
  • pairing
  • opposites
  • shape
  • size
  • social development & social interaction
  • language arts
  • concept of description
  • emotional expression
  • self discovery
  • self expression

3. Categories of Activities

Activities may be categorized according to difficulty based on the specific pre-reading or reading skills they target and reinforce. These categories are easy, medium and difficult.

Easy activities reinforce and develop the following skills:

  • letter recognition
  • sounds of letters
  • concept of shapes and shape recognition
  • colors
  • counting 1 - 10
  • building simple sequences and patterns
  • the development of "self" vocabulary (identification of body parts)

Activities categorized as of medium difficulty introduce these additional skills:

  • the development of vocabulary relating to the home environment
  • the identification of nouns as a part of speech
  • the development of labeling vocabulary
  • complex shape comparison and recognition
  • practice in the development of the visual imagery of words

Finally, difficult activities address the development of the following skills:

  • the identification of parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
  • simple sentence building through sentence completion
  • writing a complete sentence to express a single thought
  • the development of vocabulary focusing on the environment outside the home
  • following simple instructions
  • using simple measurements

Alphabet Pipe Cleaners

Use pipe cleaners to make the letters of the alphabet.

Aa / Bb / Cc / Dd
Ee / Ff / Gg / Hh
Ii / Jj / Kk / Ll
Mm / Nn / Oo / Pp
Qq / Rr / Ss / Tt
Uu / Vv / Ww / Xx
Yy / Zz

Alphabet Pipe Cleaners is an example of an easy activity.

Supplies needed:

  • large baggie
  • 26 (or more) pipe cleaners
  • instruction sheet

Trees and Leaves

Help your child trace the leaf shapes on colored paper and cut them out. Label each leaf. Glue the leaves to the paper bag. Take a walk with your child and pick up leaves and put them in the bag.
When you get home, match the shapes to find out what kinds of trees are in your neighborhood!

OAK

SWEET GUM

MAPLE

CATALPA

PINE

Trees and Leaves is an example of a medium activity.

Supplies needed:

  • large baggie
  • several sheets construction paper
  • paper lunch bag
  • leaf print sheet
  • instruction sheet

It’s all about YOU!

Help your child write a note describing themselves! Tape the note to colored paper. Have your child draw a picture of themselves on the paper and pictures of things they like!

It’s all about YOU is an example of a difficult activity.

Supplies needed:

  • large baggie
  • 1 sheet construction paper
  • 1 sheet writing paper
  • instruction sheet

11-04.FLEPs PP

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