Provide clipboards, pencil and paper for students to "write the room." Instruct students to walk around the classroom and copy any words they see onto their clipboards. Task children to fill up one side of a sheet of paper. Give children dry erase boards to practice writing. Children can either practice writing letters on the boards, or erase letters already written on the board by tracing over the shape with a white board eraser. Set up a writing center with an old telephone, notepad, post it notes, pencil, stationery, envelopes and a mailbox. Students can pretend to be secretaries and receptionists, taking phone messages, writing letters and mailing them.
Provide picture flashcards for children to sort in a variety of ways. Students might sort the cards by the letter the items begin with or the category the items belong to, for example. Provide familiar books for "reading." Even though most preschoolers will not be able to read, encourage the children to make up the story by looking at the pictures, or provide headphones to allow children to listen to books on tape. Provide multiple pairs of objects or pictures that rhyme and task the children to find all the rhyming pairs. Make strips of card stock with four pictures (laminate the strips for durability). Three of the pictures should rhyme, and one should not (for example: rat, cat, bat, dog). Challenge the children to identify the picture on each strip that does not rhyme.
Provide pages from magazines, scissors and glue. Instruct children to find specific letters, cut them out and paste them to make a poster board for display. Provide tubs of sand and salt, and resealable plastic bags with finger paint inside for children to practice writing letters with their finger. Give children a magnetic letter station to practice letter combinations and spelling their names. Fill a plastic bag with small items beginning with a certain letter. For example, in a bag for the letter "C," there might be a toy car, cat, cow and a stick of chalk. Make a bag for each letter.
Provide pictures of events from familiar stories. Task children to put the pictures in the correct sequence that they occur in the story. Give children puppets based on the characters in a favorite story and have the children retell the story using the puppets. Provide stamps and paper for the children to create a picture story using the stamps.