Help Your Child Become A Phonics Reading Pro

Word Lists

Phonics Reading Pro came up with a fun game you can play with your children when practicing reading books starts to get old:

 

1) Tell your kids you’re going to try something different while you’re reading together today. Have a spare piece of paper and explain that you are going to make a word list while he or she reads the book. Make the list based on the predominate phonics word pattern that’s being featured in the book. For example: in a book called “Matt’s Hat” you’ll be finding a lot of words with a silent short vowel ‘a’ in the word.

 

2) As your child reads the book, make a list of words that fit the phonics criteria that you’ve chosen.

 

3) When your child finishes the book, go through the list of words you’ve made for your child and see if they understand the phonics pattern.

 

4) Next, choose a similar book and tell them it’s their turn to write the list. Go through the list together and make any corrections if need be. Once this game becomes too easy, have your child make more than one list with each list having a different phonics pattern.

 

And just like that you can help your child become a phonics reading pro!

Revisit a Classic Phonics Game: Hangman :)

Remember playing hangman with friends as a child? I bet you didn’t realize you where helping your phonics reading skills by doing so! Hangman can be a very helpful game because it engages foresight (a subject we’ve discussed in previous posts) and memory of word and sentence structure. It may not be the most popular after school game anymore, but it’s definitely worth it to introduce this old classic to your kids. Start out with one-word puzzles and eventually build up to sentence-long puzzles. A cute idea is to pack a hangman puzzle inside their lunch box once a week and have them figure it out during their lunch break. Be sure to add a few clues for them. When they get home, you can have fun checking if they guessed correctlyJ

The rules of hangman are:

1)   Draw empty spaces that represent letters in a word, so that each letter had its own line to be written on.

2)   Ask your child to guess a letter that may be in the puzzle. If letter they guess is in the puzzle write it in the space(s) it belongs.

3)   Draw a box under the spaces you’ve drawn for the words in the puzzle. This box is where you write any letters that aren’t in the puzzle so you’re child won’t guess incorrectly numerous times.

4)   Every time they guess incorrectly you draw a part of the hangman’s body on the noose (i.e. head, body, two, arms, and finally two legs.). So in other words, they have 8 incorrect guesses before the hangman is complete and they’re out of guesses.

5)   When they guess the word or sentence correctly, they’ve won and then it’s their turn to make up a puzzle for youJ

This is yet another game to help your child become a Phonics Reading Pro!

Predicting Stories

It’s an important phonics reading skill to be able to look ahead and figure out the ending of a story. Always encourage your child to visualize what they are reading. Mental images help make connections between words being read and the ideas and pictures they communicate. Teach your child to think of stories almost like mini movies in the head so that as the plot develops, the imagery becomes more and more vivid. Once they learn this it’s easy for them to recall images when they begin to read the same book again, as well as develop new images as they are introduced to other books.

Making predictions about stories becomes easier when your child can imagine what’s going to happen when they are reading a story. You’ll find that when you can engage your child’s mind they’ll enjoy reading more and thus become more likely to be avid readers in the future. That’s a win-win situation for everyone! Plus, when you introduce story writing to your child, it will be all the more simple for them to be able to illustrate the pictures from their mind onto paper. How’s that for an important skill in phonics reading?

Word Drop

You know one of our favorite ways at Phonics Reading Pro to help children’s reading skills is by playing fun games. Games are a great way to reinforce the phonics reading lessons that you give your children at home. Here are the simple rules of a very fun game:

 

1)   Make up a simple sentence based on your child’s reading level. For example, if they are anchoring their short vowel skills a sentence like “The cat is on the mat” would be appropriate. If they’re practicing long vowels “The hive is on the tree” works fine, etc.

2)   Draw empty dashes for the words to be written on, much like you do for the game ‘hangman’.

3)   Above the empty dashes draw a box and put all the words of the sentence in it written at random.

4)   Explain to your child that you made a mystery sentence for them and you want them to figure out what is says. Show them the box of words and explain that the sentence contains all of those words. Show them the dashes and explain that that is where they write the words in the order of the sentence. Do the first sentence with them so that they understand how to put together a proper sentence and then create another one for them to try on their own.

5)   Keep the sentences simple and encourage them along the way! Help them create problem solving strategies and logic by asking questions. For example, if you had used the sentence ‘The hive is on the tree’ and they got tripped up, you could ask “what makes more sense ‘The tree is on the hive’ or ‘The hive is on the tree’?”  Also, don’t forget to capitalize the first letter of the sentence and put appropriate punctuation at the end and make sure that they do the same in their answer :)

6)   When they get really good at the game encourage them to draw the accompanying picture with it and—you guessed it—make a book out the pages when they make 10 or more sheets!

I think using this game with your kids to reinforce phonics lessons is great way to have fun and be proactive at the same time. Happy learning!

Word Bingo!

Here’s another create phonics game to turn your little reader into a Phonics Reading Pro! It’s called word bingo and as you’ve probably guessed, we’re just putting a phonics spin on an old classic!

 

1)   Create bingo cards with short vowel, long vowel, or sight (Dolch) words.

2)   Call out a word and tell the players to put a stamp over the word when they find it on their card.

3)   When they match all three or five words (depending on if the card is 3x3 or 5x5) and yell BINGO, check and make sure they answered correctly. (If they call BINGO incorrectly they're disqualified until the next round...)

 

Kids love this game! It’s a fun and easy way to reinforce reading skills. There are many resources on the internet that you can use to create and print out cards to use at home. Just do a little a research and you’ll be pleasantly surprised! If you have any more ideas on how to turn classic games into phonics reading games, please let us know in the comments…

 

The Mystery Box

One way to become a Phonics Reading Pro is to play phonics games! Here’s a fun phonics lesson/game to play with your child this weekend! It’s called the mystery box:

 

1)   Use a small gift box or a sack if no box is available.

2)   Choose any letter. For this example, I’ll use ‘c’.

3)   Put five or so objects in the box starting with ‘c’ in the box. Try to make them small objects like a cotton ball, mini candy cane, a small cup, etc.

4)   Tell your child you made a mystery box and they have to close their eyes and reach in and guess what the objects are.

5)   Once they take out all the objects and tell you what they are, ask them what letter they all start with. Kids love this game and catch on fast! When they get to good at the game, you can have them prepare mystery boxes for you and play it where they get to take on the role as teacher and you are the student J

 

Have fun with this phonics reading game! 

3 Steps to Help Your Child Love Reading!

A true Phonics Reading Pro has a love of reading. Here are three way to make sure your child becomes a Phonics Reading Pro:

1)  Read to them first! Who didn’t love Mom and Dad reading bedtime stories to them? Discovering the wonderful world of fantasy and knowledge that books can give you should come early for everyone!

2) Have them read to you! Once they’ve grasped the basics of reading have them read bedtime stories to you! They’ll think it’s hilarious that the tables have turned! Only you will know the real reason for the switch is for the fact that it will strengthen their reading skills even more ;)

3) Buy them books that interest them… Once they’ve moved past beginner books and express interest in new topics—go with it! A good example is one of the editors of this blog loved Babysitter Club books growing up. I’m sure her mom wasn’t thrilled to have bought 375 Babysitter Club books for her, but you know what? From that book series she learned so much about other topics that it led to her exploring other literary areas and before long she was reading classics like ‘Jane Eyre’.

Opening up the world of phonics reading to your child will make the leap from “baby books” to literature that much easier!

The Definition of Phonics

You can’t be a Phonics Reading Pro or teach your child to become one before you know exactly what phonics is! So let’s rewind: what is phonics? My favorite way of thinking of phonics is as a “decoder” of written language. Early on children realize that there are patterns in how we read words. These patterns can be made into rules and the rules can be taught in sequence. This is the main idea of phonics. Teach reading rules in sequence to help children attain the knowledge quickly and with less difficulty. Their reading lessons build on one another and build a solid foundation of reading skills.

Phonics does not only help your child learn how to read, it also lends itself to greater spelling skills, better reading comprehension, and word identification. Usually phonics is taught from kindergarten through 2^nd grade, but programs are popping up earlier and earlier now and we are seeing parents teaching phonics skills before their children even reach pre-school. Additionally, if children are having more trouble than usual learning their reading skills, it isn’t uncommon for phonics to be utilized through 3^rd grade. And that, my friends, is a quick summary of phonics!

 

The Difference Between b, d, p, and q

In our experience at Phonics Reading Pro we have found that as parents and their children begin reading together more and more, they find that there are some common trip-ups that may be encountered. There are some letters that are deceptively similar which most kids find confusing when they are first learning to recognize their letters. The most common of these are ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’, and ‘q’. Please don’t be alarmed if your child interchanges these at first; it doesn’t mean they are dyslexic. Kids frequently mix up these letters when they are first learning to read, so there’s no reason to be alarmed unless they are still mixing up these letters after a year or so of reading.

 

The easiest way to help your child remember the difference between these letters is to invest in an alphabet wall chart, like we recently discussed, and every time they interchange one letter for another prompt them to go look at the wall chart to tell the difference between them. For example, if your child is reading ‘d-o-g’ but can’t remember if ‘d’ is ‘b’ or ‘d’, tell them “ go up to the alphabet on the wall and tell me if it looks like ‘b’ for ball or ‘d’ for duck.”  The visual aid will work wonders in helping jog your child’s memory and will also help to relax them because they’ll know they always have back-up if they decide to read on their own sometimes. It’s important to instill that confidence in your child’s phonics reading keeping in mind that their confidence will spread into all elements of their life.

 

Deciphering Capitalization

Phonics Reading Pro has noticed that parents are often the first to see when their children begin to recognize all letters can take two forms: capital and lower-case. In the early stages of reading it’s not important to explain when and why capital letters are used. However, as your child takes notice you should take the opportunity to introduce the rules of using capital letters vs. lower-case. Just make sure this is in conjunction to when your child’s teacher is doing the same.

 

If you want to introduce this concept early in your at-home phonics reading practice, invest in alphabet cards that can be mounted to your child’s wall, much like those seen in kindergarten classes. These are helpful because they show the capital and lower-case letter next to each other, so if your child knows the form of the letter in lower case they can deduce that the other capital letter is the same. There are also fun, colorful pictures to illustrate the letters so they make fun and useful room decorations!  Why not use these tools as tools for your child’s early lessons in phonics reading?