What are they doing?

As I was walking around during Literacy Center time, I noticed two children putting letters on the matching board in a strange way. "Friends, what are you doing?" I asked. "We're making the mixed up alphabet" they said.  We read The Mixed-Up Alphabet by Steve Metzger last week and these two students were recreating the story with their literacy materials! How wonderful! It reminded me to slow down and ask about the purpose or plan behind what children are working on. They usually have very clever ideas! It may look like play, but there is deep thinking going on!

If you look carefully, you can see the letters in the book are all mixed up because in the story the letters decided they wanted to be in a different order. The red plastic letters are in the same order as the book.