There are tons of websites out there about how to teach our kids, so I don’t generally try to compete with them, but this will be one exception. My four year old is on the brink of reading. Seeing that light bulb go on is one of my favorite parts of homeschooling. 🙂 This little guy is by far my most active one yet, and I seem to need to switch things up on a regular basis. The more different games and materials I can use to teach the same thing, the better. He gets bored too easily with one thing over and over.
I’m a very tactile person, and I just love Bananagrams. It’s silly, but I love how they feel and how they clink together… Anyway, I found several ways to use them as another tool to teach my little ball of energy to read. He seems to like them, too.
1. Identifying letters. OK, so that’s pretty obvious, but I had to start somewhere…
2. Letter sounds. I like shuffling them up and quizzing him to see which ones he knows the sounds for. Then I can put them into a “knows it” pile and a “needs more work” pile.
3. Putting letters in order. Pretty self explanatory, but they’re just the right size to scoot around a table and work on singing the alphabet song while putting them in the right order.
4. Play ‘what’s missing?’ Put the letters in alphabetical order then take some out and have your child tell you what’s missing.
5. Sound out simple words. It’s easy with the tiles to form simple words and switch out letters to alter them. You can also have the letters separated from each other, sound them out, then gradually move them closer together to get your child to blend the sounds together into a word. B—-A—-G, B–A–G, BAG. For me, it’s always tricky to make that transition from them saying “buh, ahhh, guh” to “bag”.
6. Child forms words. Let your child build his own words.
7. Child builds sentences. Self explanatory.
Now that I’m on my third child learning to read, I have all these different resources to use. Good thing this is the kid who is going to need me to use all of them to keep him engaged!
Any other ideas??
Amy Lynn Simon 