Our friends at HandsOn Mid-Willamette Valley shared this great project idea with us, and we wanted to share it with you! It’s a great idea for a rainy-day activity with the family, for adding a small service project to a birthday party, or an office project to do during lunch!

 

Did you know 90% of the brains development happens by the age of five? Alphabet books are a fun way to teach literacy to 3-5 year old children. This project will allow you to make simple alphabet books that will go to local Head Start classrooms to help students learn the alphabet. Head Start is a comprehensive preschool program serving low-income children ages 3-5, and their families. Head Start provides early childhood education, nutrition, health, mental health, disability, and family services. Family involvement is included in all aspects of the program. This Service to Go project can be adapted to any language, numbers, shapes and colors.

For more information about the importance of reading, and other ways to help increase literacy in our community go to the HandsOn partner Reading for All at http://reading4all.com/.

For more information about Head Start, and ways to volunteer with them, you can connect with the Salem-Keizer Head Start or Community Action Agency Head Start on our website at www.HandsOnMWV.org.

Materials:

1. Construction paper 

2. Card stock, pre-made construction paper, and other fun paper 

3. Glue, scissors, tape. 

4. Markers, crayons, colored pencils, etc. 

5. Other fun crafting supplies that you have that will make the pages in your books beautiful! We recommend avoiding glitter as it gets very messy.

Directions:

1. Set up supplies on a table, making sure there is plenty of room for you and any other volunteers to work. You might want to put something underneath your work to protect the surface you are working on, such as butcher paper or newspaper.

2. Assign each participant a letter or group of letters and give them the freedom to decorate it however they choose. Remind volunteers that the word and picture needs to be a good fit for a 3-5 year old child. Also, spelling is important so you may choose to have a dictionary handy.

3. Each letter should be done on a 5×7 piece of sturdy paper and it helps if the letters are generally the same size. Also, all pages need to be created with the 7 inch side vertical, and the 5 inch side horizontal.

4. Once the pages are assembled, fill out the Reflection Sheet (see the next page). This is an important part of the project because it lets us know how it went so we can make changes or keep things just the same! This information will also help us report out on the population that we are serving. Thanks for your help!

5. If you can’t find a local nonprofit to donate your books to, mail them to with this reflection sheet to: HandsOn MWV, Service to Go, 2475 Center St. N.E. Salem, OR 97301.