Environmental print is the print of everyday life: the symbols, signs, numbers, and colors found in McDonald's, Wal-Mart, a stop sign, Pizza Hut, 7-UP, and KFC offer good entry points for young children to begin to learn to read, write, and do math. Children learn to decode symbols, for example, in the same way that adults learned to decode that "©" meant copyright. When children read environmental print they learn to count, find consonant diagraphs, alphabetize letters, sequence objects and events, find syllables, and write stories from real and imagined experiences. The long-term goal is for them to move from relying on contextual clues in the environmental print to the functional print of the classroom.
