Concepts About Print

There are several concepts about print that children learn from being read to over the years. These are things that you can point out while you are reading, but they are learned naturally for the most part.

• Children learn the nature of story language.
• They learn that stories have a beginning, middle, and end.
• They learn where the front and back of the book is, how to turn the pages, that we start reading at the top of the page and work our way to the bottom going from left to right, and that we read the left page before the right.
• They begin to understand the purpose of print and how to distinguish between print and pictures.
• They begin to recognize their own name and that those letters are always the same with a capital for the first letter and lower case for the others.
• They understand the concept of a letter and word and the letters in their name can be used to write other words.
• They find that a sentence is a complete thought (generally). The first word in a sentence is on the left and the last word goes before the end mark.  
• They develop an understanding that one spoken word matches one group of letters.

Wishing you homeschool blessings,