Carter and Dylan have always loved reading books, but now they are starting to show much more interest in words, sounds and writing. I've always noticed my friend, Jessica's son was extremely advanced in his reading and writing - I say advanced because he's not even five and he's been able to do both for sometime now. Claire is just 2 and keeping up with her big brother! I asked if she could share some of her tips / secrets and she wrote this great post and I wanted to share since there are lots of other moms who read this blog too! Jess also does tons of really cool crafts and activities with her kiddos! THANKS FOR SHARING JESSICA!!!
HERE IS WHAT SHE SHARED! We already did the word / envelope game tonight.
So, I had a request to do a blog post about the activities I do with the kids to get them reading. Sam has been cruising along with his reading and Claire is trying to join him by recognizing short words. She has mastered all of her letters (upper and lowercase) so I am trying to move her on to short word recognition. Not really sight words, but more common words (mom, dad, cat, dog). Here are some of my favorite activities:
1. Each month I try to do a themed piece on our wall in the kitchen. For example, in November I did a turkey with feathers. Each of the feathers had a word or letter. I give the kids baskets and tell them to pluck the word (we did apples where they pick the word). Doing it every morning really helped with the recognition.
2. We play a game where I lay out sight words and they throw a bean bag and try to land on the word. If they hit it they sound it out and get to take the card.
3. Sight word go fish. This is regular Go Fish, but with pairs of sight words so Sam will ask me "Mom, do you have the word come?"
4. Sight word stamp out. I list a bunch of the same words on a paper and they stamp with paint stamps the words when I say them.
6. Once they start recognizing words I have the kids go through our little animal magazines and highlight them. So I will say "Highlight in yellow the word and when you see it!"
5. I also taped words on their train track and as they drive over them with the train they say them. Or I would say "Drive over the word go."
6. I do mail center so there are pieces of paper hidden all over the house with words on them. I have envelopes with the words on them too. They have to find the word that matches the envelope by searching and sounding them out.
7. I made a mat for Claire with all capital letters on it and then small pieces with the lowercase. We worked on matching them everyday. She loved it and I think you could do it for sight words too.
8. I made a Candyland-style board where Sam received a sticker everytime he read a book all the way through. He finished it and loved going to Target to get something. He has a new one going now.
9. I let them pick out as many books as they want at the library and I love the BOB books apps on my phone for learning to spell.
10. When Sam started to recognize enough sight words I created tiny 6 page books with sentences like. We go too. I like me. He loved flipping through the tiny book and reading it to me. I saved one and he was 3.5 when he did it. So cute.
11.Sometimes I just flip through the flash cards and tell Sam it's a race to see who can get them the fastest. I also taught him that two vowels make the first vowel say it's name, e at the end makes the vowel say it's name, and the ch, sh and th sounds. I also told him about ing making the sound and er making the sound. That helped him so much with sounding out words.
12. His latest favorite is reading at night after we put him to bed with his head lamp. That was Susie's idea.
13. We are doing a new schedule at our house now that is:
30 mins Chores
30 mins Active
30 mins Free Play
30 mins Write
30 mins Read.
They get to pick the order each day, but we do them all and it really helps getting them to focus on writing practice and reading.
So, I hope this was helpful. Enjoy,
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