Environmental print activities provide students' families with an integrative way to encourage reading. While in the grocery store recently, the author watched two young girls begging their mother to stop as they pointed to their "favorite" snack on the shelf. They were about five years old and probably couldn?t read yet, but they knew exactly what they wanted. At a very early age, children can identify their favorite cereal box by its logo and style of lettering without reading the label; they are knowledgeable about what they want and where to find it in the store. This fact is not lost on the advertising industry, which markets to and targets children as consumers. Research has shown that, while at first, children may see symbols or pictures that represent their favorite name brands, knowledge of these signs in their environment can serve as a basis for them to begin to understand the alphabetic system.