Book excerpt: Kindergarten is a time for playful and enriching learning activities that support children's literacy emergence while enhancing their social and cognitive development. The routines of a busy, engaged, productive kindergarten classroom are vividly brought to life in this information-packed book. Demonstrated are whole-class and small-group strategies for helping children acquire concepts about print and the alphabet, build phonological and phonemic awareness, learn to read sight words, develop their listening comprehension and writing abilities, and much more.