Every day the letter carrier probably brings mail to your mail box that you might

just throw away.  But don’t toss junk mail in the trash before you use it first to help

your preschooler get ready for reading!  Here’s how:

 For example, did you get a flyer today about a pizza sale?  Then circle the word   

pizza    the first time you see it in the advertisement,give your child a pen or marker and

ask her if she can find other places where  pizza   appears.   That’s great practice with

looking for letters and recognizing their patterns in words.   

 Did you get an ad from the grocery store about its week-end specials?  Does it

have photos or pictures of fruits, vegetables, meats and other items your child can

recognize?  Are there words printed underneath the pictures?  Great!  Then this flyer can be a way to help your child see that the letters    o r a n g e s   

spell his favorite fruit!  Or that    c h i c k e n   begins with the same letter   c   that  his

name starts with and that the letters that spell   h a m  (which he doesn’t like)  show up at

the beginning of   h a m b u r g e r  (which he does!) Car advertisements can be used for matching games.  Just cut out all the red

trucks or blue cars and see if your child can find the cars that look alike and which ones

are different.   Or you could make a game like, “Go, Fish,” by pasting the advertisement

pictures on cards and then “fishing” for yellow pick-ups or blue mini-vans!  That’s more

good practice for later in school when he’ll be looking for letters that are the same and

those that are different. Some organizations send colorful stickers and stamps or address labels when

they ask you for money.  Whether or not you want to give a donation, put those labels,

stickers and stamps to good use.   They can be fun for your child to play with along with

the envelopes the organizations probably also enclosed for you to mail back to them.  Put

this kind of mail together with pens, pencils, crayons or markers, so your child can

play at writing letters.   Then she can seal them in the envelopes and pretend to put them

in a “mail box” you and she could easily make together from an empty tissue box  

 So the next time your mailbox is filled with political flyers and catalogues and

advertisements, don’t just throw them away!  Put them to good use first, to help your

young child practice skills she can use later when she learns to read.