Environmental print can be an excellent tool to use in your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten classroom. Young children pay attention to their environment and can pick up on letters and words from their exposure. Environmental print can be a bridge to the classroom and the child’s outside world. It is a great way to introduce letters, words, and letter sounds to your students using print of everyday life.
Environmental print can be used all year and for tons of themes, but here are some of my favorites: food/nutrition, thanksgiving, birthday, Halloween (candy wrappers), and construction (signs). Examples of environmental print include food boxes, store ads, movie inserts, newspaper ads, etc.
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Grocery Store Dramatic Play Area! Have a grocery store in the dramatic play area, and have families send in empty containers to build your collection. This is a great way to add each family’s culture to the classroom with the food containers they eat. After you are done with it, save any containers you might need for other dramatic play themes and cut up the boxes to use for the rest of the year. Add paint to any bottle to make it more appealing for students to play with, like red paint to the ketchup bottle or brown paint to a syrup bottle.
Store Ads & Sales! P lace an ad on a whiteboard, and students can write the “sales” for the day. Great way to get kids writing in the dramatic play center. Any dry-erase board will work, large or small. Students can work on letters and numbers on a daily basis.
I Like to Eat Class Book! I Like to Eat class book is a ton of fun to make and great scissor skill work too. Gather some grocery store ads or collect wrappers from students’ lunches (chip bags, applesauce lids, yogurt tops, etc.) which are both filled with another type of print! Print the freebie, cut it out, and glue it to small paper lunch bags. Students cut out food from the ads and glue it to the bag to create their “page” in the book! Laminate, bind the book with a metal ring, and put it in your classroom library for students to read over and over all year long!
>>Grab the I Like to Eat Class Book freebie by putting your email in the box at the bottom of the post.
Ads at the Writing Center! K ids love to cut and glue, so why not add store ads to your writing center? To make it even more fun, add paper plates for students to write and glue on. If you don’t have access to store ads, make your own environmental print cards and ads and use them each year.
Environment Print Cutting Lists! Another great use of environmental print is to s ave toy magazines around the holidays, and Target usually has a stack at the front of the store you can grab. Students then cut and glue to make a shopping list. You can do a wish list for a birthday theme too.
Environmental Print Making Shopping Lists! C ut the fronts of boxes off to use for tons of activities. Students can copy the words from the boxes or use scribble/mock writing and drawing to create their lists. Keep this for a writing assessment or their portfolio. Grab the shopping list here.
Letter Hunt! U se the same food boxes for a letter hunt. Students see a letter, say the name and sound for the letter, then write it on their paper. Use clipboards if doing the activity on the floor for more fun. Grab the FREE letter hunt worksheets here.
Letter Match! Use the same food boxes, and students find the matching letter manipulatives and place them on the boxes (letter beads, magnet letters, whatever letter manipulative you have in your classroom.)
Birthday Plate Environmental Print Book! Students bring in a plate from their past birthday parties. Some plates don’t have text, but some do. I ask my students to send in the plates during a birthday theme. Click here to read the birthday dramatic play post. I love this because it builds classroom community and oral language.
Environment Print Inside the Pretend Fridge! Use lots of labels and food containers to expose students to lots of letters and words. Make your empty bottles more captivating by adding paint inside so they look full and add more color to your pretend area. This is a meaningful way to stock your dramatic play area with items that are relevant your students.
Environmental Print Matching Game! T hese are the small cereal boxes, but you can do this with any boxes you have two of. Some boxes have the same labels on the sides, which are perfect for use because they are smaller. Students play like a memory game. You can also use food labels if you have older children.
Environmental Print Puzzles! Cut the boxes in various ways to make cereal box puzzles and have one complete so students know what it should look like. Puzzles help develop spatial sense. I keep each puzzle in a gallon baggie. You can add numbers or letters to the bottom for students to practice number order or abc order. You don’t have to just use cereal boxes; use any food that comes in a box.
Environmental Print Candy Path Game! Use this candy path game to develop one-to-one correspondence. Great for three and four-year-olds. Roll a color dice, and move the bear one spot up. This is fun around Halloween and a great reason to eat candy! You can also do it with other food wrappers.
Environmental Print Path Games! M ake a board game on a poster board and one is a simple path and the other is harder. I used Google images to find the photos of the boxes. Students roll a die and move that many spaces. As they pass a picture, they say what it is.
Environment Print Measuring! Use food containers as objects to measure with linking cubes or rainbow rulers. This gives students an opportunity to see environmental print, practice measuring, and counting.
Environmental Print 3D Shape Sort! Find food boxes and packages that are 3d shapes. A dd fake fruit and veggies for the spheres. Students sort the objects by shape onto the graph.
Environmental Print Shape Hunt & Match! T here are so many shapes all over the boxes for students to find! They can match shape manipulatives and/or write on shape hunt paper. Grab the shape hunt worksheet freebie here.
Environmental Print Road & Construction Signs! G et a set of street signs to add print to the blocks center. You can keep them in the center all year long. Road signs are a simple addition that can add literacy to your block area and get some of your more reluctant learners to notice common sight words like stop on the stop sign. Plus traffic signs gives your students something to talk with their parents about on a long car ride or a road trip.
Environmental Print DIY Restaurant Blocks! I f you are doing a theme like pizza that has stores, restaurants, or places in your community, make a set with those places to match your theme.
Environmental Print Building with Boxes! A dd boxes or containers to the block center to add environmental print. I ask families to send in cereal boxes, and I would get a handful sent in, so I keep them year after year. I just fold them and keep the boxes in a stack in my closet. When students build with a new type of material, they have to problem-solve and use science skills to figure out how to stack, balance, and build with them.
As you can see, using environmental print can be simple and helpful. It is easy to use in multiple centers and areas in your preschool classroom too! Exposing students to all kinds of environmental print activities is a great way to build classroom community and increase literacy exposure. It also gives little learners more print awareness and print concepts, like reading left to right and top to bottom.
Learn how I use fine motor journals in my classroom here. They are another easy way to teach literacy!
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