Building Literacy

Place the following items in your reading area: hard hat, work boots, toolbox, and construction stories.

Story Time Idea

Show up for story time dressed in a hard hat and work boots. Bring along a toolbox filled
 with construction stories. then proceed to build up your little ones' imaginations, vocabularies,
 and language skills! After reading to your students, place the book filled toolbox in your reading area.

My Toolbox

Materials Needed:
5 1/2"x11" sheets of copy paper and 6"x12" sheets of construction paper,
 pipe cleaners, stapler or tape, crayons, magazines, scissors, glue

Directions:
For each child, staple together a few 5 1/2"x11" sheets of copy paper between two
 6"x12" sheets of construction paper. then staple or tape a pipe-cleaner handle to the
 construction paper cover, so that the book resembles a toolbox. Invite each young
 author to create his own magical toolbox by either drawing or cutting and pasting pictures
 on each page. The tools can be as true-to-life or as silly as youngsters wish.
 Be sure to have them share the contents with the class.

Three Little Pigs

Read "the Three Little Pigs" and let the children build each of the three houses.
  Have fun blowing them over and reconstructing them.  Brainstorm to see
 if you can find a way to make the straw and stick houses stronger.

Raise The Roof by Anastasia Suen

A Worker on the Transcontinental Railroad by James Barter

If You Were a Construction Worker by Virginia Schomp

A day in the Life of a High-Iron Worker by John Harding Martin

The Night Worker by Kate Banks

Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Fleming

B is for Bulldozer;  An Instruction ABC by June Sobel

The Backyard Bird House Book by Rene and Christyna M. Laubach

Bam Zam Boom by William Lightfoot

Barns by Marc Nieson

Big Trucks, Big Wheels by Petrina Gentile, Bobbie Kalman, Marc Crabtree

Bob's Busy Day by Mary Man-Kong

Building A House by Byron Barton

Building Machines and What They Do by Derek Radford

Construction Trucks by Betsy Imershein

Construction Zone by Tana Hoban

Dumpy the Dump Truck by Julie Andrews Edwards & Emma Walton Hamilton

Get To Work, Trucks! by Don Carter.

Houses and Homes by Ann Morris

Machines At Work by Byron Barton

My Little Red Toolbox by Stephen T. Johnson

Old MacDonald Had a Woodshop byLisa Shulman

The Busy Building Book by Sue Tarsky

This is the House That Jack Built by Simms Taback

The House That Jack Built by Jeanette Winter

 The Lot at the End of My Block by Kevin Lewis

The Toolbox by Anne & Harlow Rockwell.

Tools by Ann Morris

Who Uses This? by Margaret Miller