Preschool Writing Activity – Class Pancake Book

Creating a class book is such a fun preschool writing activity. I’m sure this class pancake book will jump straight to the top or your list of early literacy activities for preschoolers!

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Related: Pat-A-Cake Printable Poem and Sequencing Cards

This week’s #PLAYfulpreschool theme is “pancakes!” The pre-k kiddos and I had fun talking about our favorite pancakes. Afterwards, we thought it would be fun to make our very own class pancake book. I’d originally hoped to make a “cookbook” of kid recipes, but they wanted to write about their favorite pancakes instead. Either way, this turned into a fun preschool writing activity for the students.

pancake preschool writing activity

What we did
During center time, I chatted with the kids in small groups and one-on-one. This activity occurred over multiple days, so my assistants were able to join in on the fun, too. We talked about our favorite pancakes, how to make them, and what we like on our pancakes.

During the discussion, I encouraged the children to draw a picture of what they were telling me about. I suggested drawing their favorite pancakes or drawing their families eating pancakes together.

After the drawings were done, the children dictated what to write down. I wrote the words as they watched to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. Most of the children were very attentive during this process!

Once we had the illustrations and the words, it was time to assemble our little book. I called the children over to come up with a title for the book. I expected this to take longer, but they quickly decided on “Pancake World by the Pre-K Children”. So that’s what I wrote on the front cover.  A few of the kids added pictures to the front cover before declaring it finished.

I have a binding machine (I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post) and I loooooove it! I grabbed it out of the cabinet and had some boys and girls help me bind our newest book. This was the first time I used the machine with the kids this year, and they were enthralled. I see even more book-making in my future.

Other ideas
If you’d rather have a book with repetitive text, give the children a sentence frame to use. Perhaps “I like (kind of) pancakes” or “I can eat (number of) pancakes.”

I still think a kid-written pancake cookbook would be fun (and entertaining)! 🙂

what do kids learn with this preschool writing activity?

Despite the simplicity of this bookmaking process, the children gain quite a bit. Here are some of the early learning concepts touched upon:

• Language and conversation practice
• Oral language can become written language (what we say, we can read)
• Reading and writing go from left to right, top to bottom
• Correct letter formation
• Books’ illustrations give clues about text

Do you create books with your children? What are their favorite topics? Do you have another favorite preschool writing activity to share? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below.

Check out the rest of the #PLAYfulpreschool pancake fun

Done-for-You Preschool Resources

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