Children make sense of the world around them by touching, smelling, tasting, seeing, moving and hearing. Outdoor literacy activities are a great way for children to engage their senses. There really is something special about finding a stone in nature, feeling its texture, and smelling its ocean or lake-like smell.
Literacy rocks help to incorporate nature and sensory based learning into literacy. They are a way of introducing and helping children practice the art of communicating through written texts. What you can do with worksheets, you can easily do with smooth rocks or stones that you can collect outside.
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Outdoor Literacy Activities: Making literacy rocks
The key to literacy rocks is having smooth rocks that can be easily drawn or painted on. I like to use river stones because they are smooth, round and usually lighter in color. I like to use paint pens such as Posca Pens to write my letters on the rocks, but Sharpies also do the trick. Rocks can be sprayed with a clear coat to protect the paint from the elements. Adults can make the literacy rocks ahead of time, or they can involve their children in collecting the rocks and writing the letters on them.
When I made my literacy rock bags, I had some literacy activities in mind. I added letters that would be suitable for the activities I had planned. For example, I have a bag with all the letters of the alphabet to practice letter recognition and letter sounds. I also sorted my literacy rocks into smaller bags for different activities. See the activities below to learn how I organised the literacy rock bags.
Outdoor literacy activities with literacy rocks:
Letter Recognition
For this activity, I put stones with each letter of the alphabet into a bag. This activity can be as simple as the child pulling a stone from a bag and saying the letter name or sound. It can also be made more fun by hiding the letters around the backyard, or in a local park for the kids to search for.
Rhyming Words
For this activity I made bags that have specific letters in them to practice rhyming words. (I made one set for words that rhyme with the word “SAT”. I included one A and one T, then a selection of other letters that could create words that rhyme with “SAT”. For example, I added an H for hat, and M for mat, a C for cat.
The first time you do this activity, you may need to help your little one with the first word, then they can come up with the rhyming words.
Literacy Rock Scrabble
For this activity I used a wooden game board I happened to have at home. I turned it upside down and drew the grid on it. You could use a checkers or chess board, cardboard, or play directly on the table. We evenly distributed rocks between the two of us, then took turns laying down rocks trying to form words. As we formed words, we awarded ourselves a point. When we got stuck, we allowed ourselves to move previously placed letters as long as that did not ruin any words already made. The key is to practice spelling words, and having fun and not get hung up on the rules.
Literacy Rock Boggle
This game is played like the traditional Boggle game. Instead of shaking the rocks, we randomly spread them on our game board. We set a timer for two minutes then tried to find as many words as we could in 2 minutes. In the first round we only formed words vertically, horizontally and diagonally. In subsequent rounds, we decided that as long as letters touch, we could use them to form words. Can you see the words bolt, love and halo above?
Other outdoor literacy activities with literacy rocks
I’ve hidden rocks with letters on them around my community and am always happy to hear about someone finding a rock and keeping it. Some children try to collect the entire alphabet, while others try to find the letters of their name.
I recently made a set of literacy rocks for a gift for a young neighbor. I painted the letters of the alphabet (adding in extras of some letters), made a simple poster paper game board, typed out instructions for Literacy Rock Boggle and Scrabble and added everything to a cloth bag.
Whatever way you decide to use literacy rocks, they are sure to be a hit with young learners.
Check out my post on Wild Math – Using Leaves to Make Math Learning Fun.
