In Tools of the Mind, children develop, express and represent their play intentions through play planning. They take turns choosing roles, describing what they are going to do when they play, and then recording their plans on paper through drawing and writing. Children work at their own levels and are encouraged to add details to their drawings, use lines to represent the words in their written messages, and use the Tools of the Mind Sound Map to write letters representing the sounds in the words. Play Planning, then, involves the child “thinking before acting.” It supports the development of self-regulation skills because children plan prior to acting – a process that eventually helps them to monitor their actions and inhibit inappropriate actions. The Play Plan is also the first contextually relevant literacy experience for the children. It is the mechanism for teaching reading and writing skills, such as the concept of word, phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, phonemic segmentation, and the use of written speech to convey a message to others.