Symbols

In the midst of our preparations for Valentine's day, and talking about kindness, friendship, and love, we realized just how many symbols were associated with the holiday. Most significantly, the heart shape. We read a Valentine's day story and discussed how the hearts we saw on the pages were symbols for the feeling of love.
We touched on the concept of symbols a few weeks ago when we were talking about maps. Symbols are an important part of emergent literacy. Literacy put simply is the ability to associate symbols with meaning; a letter to a sound, a word to an object. The understanding that symbols represent something, that they have meaning, is essential.
We decided to explore story telling through symbols. First we worked as a class to "write a story". Then we gave the children small pieces of paper to create their own stories.

On the second day, we introduced blocks with symbols attached and encouraged the children who were interested to create their own stories. 
Would they need to make any new symbols to complete their story? 
We spent a lot of time this week making up stories using our symbol blocks. 
We were pleased to see so much interest. 







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