The Joy of Teaching

Teach your child to read by introducing phonics games and reading activities at home. Phonics plays an important role in teaching children to read. It helps children understand that certain letter combinations make specific sounds. Once children understand a specific phonics pattern (word family) they can identify new words that use that same word pattern. Practicing phonemic awareness at home helps children decode words and increases their word recognition, which ultimately increases their reading fluency.

Here are a few fun phonics activities and resources to try at home with your preschool, kindergarten, and first grade child.

1. Phonics Flip Book

Phonics flip books can be a fun way to teach sound and letter combinations. All you need is a wire-bound index card notebook, scissors, tape, and markers. You may design your flip book to practice three-letter words and sounds, blends, or word families. Word families help children identify common spellings and sounds in words. Tip: If your child only recognizes capital letters use capitals only. Incorporate lower case letters with uppercase letters when your child can identify them.

To make a blending flip book:  

• Divide and cut the notebook into three sections.
• Label the first, second, and last sections with letters A–Z. Place consonant letters in the beginning and end of the word and put a vowel in the middle.
• It is OK if your combinations don’t all make words. The purpose of this technique is to teach blending of sounds.

To make a word family flip book:

• Divide and cut the notebook into two sections.
• Label your first section with a blend such as: “fl, bl, cl, st, wh, ch, dr, or gr”
• Write your word family in the last section using patters like “at, ig, ake, ight, ing, ock, eep, or est.”
• Choose letters that form words with your word families.

2. Rhyming Phonics Game

Gather sets of rhyming objects to play the game “rhyme in a bag.” The objects should be small toys, stuffed animals or items you have around the house and in your toy bins. Place half in a paper bag and half on a table (pre-sort your objects so you have rhyming pairs in both places.) Have your child reach into the bag, pull out an object, and match it to an item on the table that rhymes. You can make it more advanced by adding word cards to pair with each object. Some examples of things you might find are:

• Pen, hen
• Sock, rock
• Cat, hat
• spoon, prune
• Rug, bug
• Glue, blue
• Tape, grape

Rhyming can help children understand that words that share common sounds often share common letters.

3. Phonics Hopscotch

Count word syllables with a hopscotch game. Using chalk or blue tape on carpet, outline the numbers 1–4 in the squares. Have children take turns counting out the syllables of a word using their feet. Understanding that words can be broken apart into syllables makes it easier for readers to decode as well as spell correctly.

4. Alphabet Hunt

An alphabet hunt is a fun and interactive way to teach letter and sound combinations. For beginning readers, matching objects with the same beginning and ending sounds reinforces this concept. Assign a letter of the week and have your child find objects in the house that have the same beginning sound as the weekly letter. If you use the letter C, have your child identify items that start with the hard “C” sound such as: couch, cushion, cat, carpet, calendar, clock, and candle. (The letter C can also make the soft “C” sound as in price and ice, but that is a lesson for first grade.) If your child chooses words that start with K, that is fine, too. This exercise is not about spelling words but about listening to the sounds they make.

5. Phonics 3 x 5 Card Games

Make your own phonics games with 3 x 5 cards (or post-its), markers, paper clips, and paper bags.

Spell It:

1. Cut up a 3 x 5 card into 3 even squares. (You may also use post-it notes.)
2. Pick a short three-letter word such as: cat, sat, bat, big, fig, pig, wig, rug, bug, hen, pen, men, mop, fox, box. Write one letter on each of the three squares. Give your child the pieces of the card with the letters mixed up.
3. Have your child put the letters in order identifying the beginning, middle, and end sounds.

Tip: Work on words in the same word family such as the “at” family to help your child remember each letter pattern. Then, mix up word families so you pair “bat,” “rug,” and “mop” one right after the other. This will help you assess whether or not your child understands the “at,” “ug” and “op” word families. Clip your words together with paper clips and store them in a paper bag. (If you are using post-it notes you can stick the words together without the paper clips.)

Syllable Count:

1. Using a 3 x 5 card, write a word with one, two, or three syllables such as goat, globe, snake, apple, dinosaur, lion, baby, balloon, pig, shoe, leaf, pajamas. (You may also draw or glue a picture of the word to the card to help your child learn the new word.)
2. Label three paper bags with one syllable, two syllables, and three syllables.
3. Pull out one of the words such as “goat” and read it with your child. Ask him or her to count the syllables in the word and put the card into the bag with the correct syllables. “Goat” is one syllable, so it should be placed into the bag labeled “1 syllable.”
4. For a quick video lesson on syllables view this video from Scratch Garden.

Tip: Use clapping hands to teach your child syllable counts. Once your child has mastered these simple words you can make it harder with two-, three-, and four-syllable words such as tiger, flower, radio, calendar, tornado, potato, magazine, pencil, toothbrush, jacket, alligator and watermelon.

6. Phonics and Reading Activity Books

Include colorful phonics activity books, flashcards, and worksheets to reinforce your child’s learning.

Learn the alphabet with colorful activities, audio read-alouds and creative activities! Smart Start: Read and Write activity books for PreK-1 are a great way to introduce beginning reading activities.

Listen and Learn Alphabet for grades PreK-1  includes fun alphabet activities to help children learn alphabet letters and sounds. The audio read-alouds on each page help pre-readers listen and follow along with activities.

Learning Line: Short Vowels: This resource is a great stepping stone for young children who have already learned their alphabet letters and sounds and are ready to work on blending.

Learning Line: Word Families: After your child can read simple words and sentences, you may begin to tackle short word families such as “ick” “ake,” and “own.”

Smart Start: Sight Words and High Frequency Words  for PreK-1 includes creative activities and audio read-alouds to help little learners practice and learn important sight words. Since many sight words and high-frequency words are not phonetic, children need repeated practice to recognize these words on sight.

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.

For some kids, the kitchen is a pit stop to refuel on snacks and drinks. But did you know that the kitchen is the perfect place to do STEM activities with your children? You can make learning fun by exploring everyday items found in your kitchen. These fun activities will help you and your children discover science, technology, engineering, and math in your very own kitchen!

Science

Many science concepts can be demonstrated using simple ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry. For example, pull out ingredients for a cake you want to make. Ask your child questions, such as Where do these ingredients come from? Many kids will know milk comes from cows, but where does flour come from? Have your child touch the ingredients and describe the texture: hard, soft, bumpy, squishy, etc.

Then teach your child about the changes in states of matter. Explain that when ingredients are put together, they make a mixture. The cake batter starts off as a liquid, but turns into a solid after it is heated in the oven.

Kids can also explore sound and pitch by hitting different sized pans or containers. Put various items, such as rice, pasta, or marshmallows, inside the containers to hear different sounds.

Technology

Many people think technology is all about computers and the latest app. But technology also includes any manufactured tools, such as scissors, whisks, microwaves, pots, and spatulas. Pick up some tools in your kitchen and have your child guess what they are used for.

Coding is an important concept in computer science. Coding uses step-by-step instructions to tell a computer what to do. Have your child practice his or her coding skills by giving you (the computer) instructions on how to do something. For example, have your child teach you how to clean a dish. The first step would be to grab the soap. Next, squeeze the soap on a sponge and wet it with water. Then pick up the dish and scrub the dish with the sponge, etc. It is important that you do everything in the order that your child tells you. This demonstrates in a meaningful way that instructions need to be detailed and in the right order. This also helps children recognize where their code went wrong and how to fix it.

Engineering

Kids love to play with their food, so let’s do more of what they enjoy! Give your child pretzels and marshmallows and have your child connect them to build different shapes. You can also use those same food items, along with toothpicks and gumdrops, to build a house for a small toy. Another fun activity to do with your child is stacking paper cups to build a large tower. This teaches children about construction, stability, and balance.

Math

The kitchen seems like it was made for math! Children can build their math skills by sorting fruits and vegetable by color or shape. You can even open a bag of trail mix and have your child sort the ingredients. Other simple math activities in the kitchen include measuring ingredients for a recipe or counting the amount of plates and cups that need to be set on the table.

The kitchen isn’t just a place for cooking. It’s the best room in the house to learn more about science, technology, engineering, and math.

If you are interested in more STEM activities for kids check out Smart Start STEM for grades Prek-1!

For more information on STEM education read What is STEM Education and Why is it Important?

Tiffany Rivera graduated from Arizona State University with a B.S. in Family and Human Development and is currently studying for her Master’s degree in Elementary Education. She has over 10 years experience as a preschool teacher and has also taught elementary-high school English in South Korea. Tiffany is currently working for Evan-Moor’s editorial team, where she writes fun and engaging books for young children and classrooms.