How do you make learning to read fun?

[mo2]

Do you use games? A white board? I need ideas.

[Guest]

Some of the stuff we did with ds when learning to read, plan to use them all again with dd:

 

Beall's Phonogram Fun Packet

Beginning Phonics Tiles

Abeka blend ladders (size made them fun to do; although my son loved doing any kind of flashcard-type thing by himself)

Salt box, sidewalk chalk, whiteboard

Fun books!

[Wheres Toto]

We use a lot of printable card games from Kelly's Kindergarten. They're great because they are Word files so you can use whatever words you are working on.

We also have Scrabble Jr., Boggle Jr., Silly Sentences and Phonics bingo. I also read regular Cat In the Hat type books with my son once he had a few words. I let him read what he could and I read the rest. He had no interest in the Bob books but I did print some word family readers from Hubbards Cupboard.

 

We do use lap size white boards to do writing.

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

We wrote words on a white board.

 

We built words using a movable alphabet.

 

We played various games: matching words to objects and pictures, paired rhyming words and words beginning or ending with the same sound, matching spoken words to written words.

[lindsrae]

I make flashcards of words...some sight words, some review words, some new ones...and put a paper clip on each card. My DD love to "fish" for the cards with a magnet attached to a string; she keeps the cards as she reads them. My 3-year-old fishes for letters and tells me the sound of each one :)

[mo2]

We use a lot of printable card games from Kelly's Kindergarten.

 

These are great! Thank you.

[Kuovonne]

I don't start reading lessons until after the kids have their letter sounds memorized, can blend, and like being read to. Then, as the last part of the reading lesson, I have the child pick a book for me to read to her.

[boscopup]

What age?

 

White board and VERY short lessons work well for my 4 year old. He's at the age where if he wasn't enjoying it, I'd back off until he was ready (had to do that when my oldest was 4, and a few months later, he was reading Dr. Seuss).

 

Starfall.com is fun too.

[ElizabethB]

My concentration game, do lessons from a white board.

 

Also, sometimes for a regular lesson, I'll let them pick reading or spelling, for example for a K student: "Spell 8 words or read 20, your choice."

 

My children have also enjoyed "Read, Write, Type." They now have an online version that is easier than getting the CD.

 

My daughter liked Starfall, my son, not so much.

[FairProspects]

M & Ms ;).

[Brenda in FL]

My kids were about 4 to 5 when learning to read. We kept the lessons short. Used stickers and a calendar to mark their progress. Incorporated Bob Books at the appropriate time and offered praise that they read a "real" book. Lessons were on the comfy couch. No writing involved. The reward at the end - their very own library card!

 

We used 100 EZ lessons.

 

One needed to break every so often - and we did. But I still did some kind of daily reading with her. Once she just wasted me to read from a book and then she would repeat :001_smile: And the other time we went to the first McGuffey book - when she got bored of that - we finished 100 EZ lessons and she got her library card!

 

At 4 and 5, I pretty much go with their tolerance. It's still a young age and there's plenty of time to get "serious" in first and second grade.

[Carol in Cal.]

I wrote notes to DD. She loved that. She would puzzle over them, and figure out what they said, and then write something back to me.

 

Also, I made flashcards of the most common 400 words in English, and we played War with them. We would turn them over and if she said the word sooner than I did, she would win the card. (I always waited 10 seconds).

 

I made sure that she read at her own level as well as stretching to learn new stuff all the time, and I told her that she could stay up and read in bed as late as she wanted although she had to be in bed by a certain time. I also got the IR book recommendations in SOTW1's AG, and let those be her reading books from time to time. It was a great relief from 100 EZ Lessons, which, though effective, did not shine in the 'great stories' category.

[EppieJ]

Lots of reading (you reading to dc). We played "sound" games like "look out the window, what do you see? Tree? t-t-tree. Tree starts with t." We'd do scavenger hunts like "go to your room and bring me back something that starts with the "s" sound." We also used magnetic letters.

 

We did about the first 38 lessons of 100 EZ Lessons which gave us a pretty good foundation (ds didn't really care for it but it worked). After that, he started reading to me everyday. We'd pick out a simple book and I'd have him read a couple of words and I'd either read the rest or save it for him to continue reading to me. Then we graduated to sentences, then pages.

 

He also really enjoyed Reader Rabbit and JumpStart computer games. We used Starfall a couple of times as well as a Between the Lions website that had some games on it.

 

I spent time looking at websites like Lakeshore Learning to get some ideas of different things I could make/implement at home. They had "Phonetic Buckets" (I think that's what they're called) that would be easy enough to do yourself. We also made giant letter collages. ds still has a few hanging on his wall!

 

Anyway, HTH!