SMMART READING: Letter Matches The Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival hosted by Science@home is for anyone, because we are all teachers and learners all the time. This month our theme is “English”, including Speaking, Listening, Reading and Viewing. I think our bloggers have covered all of these and there are lots of resources and game ideas, plus a giveaway. Please read through to the end to find links to the other participating blogs.
Do you have some of those little letter magnets? Foam letters? You can even write small letters of the alphabet on a piece of paper and cut them out into little letter squares. Whatever you have will do for this activity.
On a piece of paper, write a few words that you would like your child to read and spell. This activity works GREAT for practicing "spelling words". (On a simpler note, you can just write a few letters on a piece of paper and let your child match letters as they say the letter sounds.)
Pour out your pile of letter and have your child cover each letter of the written word with a magnetic, foam, or paper letter. Have her sound out each letter as she matches.
After she's matched all the letters of the word, let your child read the word that she's spelled.
This extra attention to each word helps awareness of which letters are needed for the correct spelling, and which letter sounds are needed to create these words (Especially when spelling words with tricky letter combinations ("ck", "th", "gh"...)
This is also a GREAT activity for children learning a foreign or a second language!
Visit Science@home to find out more about the Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival.
Please take the time to visit the other participants and check out their posts on “English.”
- Monique at Your Cheeky Monkey has written about why her family thinks storytelling is so important, some storytelling ideas, and a few of their favorite books.
- Julie at Works For Me Homemaking is encouraging sound play with preschoolers and not just for fun. It is an important tool to develop sound awareness skills and enhance early literacy development.
- Staci from Teaching Money to Kids reminds us that sometimes language and interaction need to be explicitly taught and practiced, and has some ways to teach the language of sharing.
- Leechbabe from Stuff with Thing asks what happens when your child interprets everything said to them in a very literal way? How do you aid their understanding of the funny things people say?
- Squiggle Mum was reminded recently that you don’t have to be a literacy specialist to know how to read aloud to a young child. After all, it ain’t rocket science…
- Lisa at SMMART Ideas has a LETTER MATCHING activity to help you practice spelling words, or even foreign language vocabulary.
- Deb from Science@home has a giveaway to help you go on an expedition on your bookshelf.
- Colin Wee at Super Parents is teaching his kids to argue by learning how to create a reasoned argument for English creative writing and the OREO Acronym.
- The Planning Queen from Planning With Kids had her own bookclub when she and her son read the same book. It was a great experience to have a book discussion with her son where she hadn’t been reading the story “to him”.
- Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori agrees with Maria Montessori that young children have a natural love of learning. Thanks to matching Montessori sandpaper letters with small objects, her son decided as a toddler that learning to read was just a fun game.
- Amanda at HomeAge posts that we all know The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but Eric Carle has so much more to offer to young readers, particularly those interested in the natural world. With bright, beautiful artworks and simple, repetitive stories these books are a wonderful way to entice the young “reader”.
- Miss Carly from Early Childhood Resources has steps and advice in creating a literacy rich environment for children of all ages.
- Christie at Childhood 101 points out that the process of sharing stories through oral storytelling is an age old tradition amongst families, but does it have a place in our busy modern day family life?
- Sarah at Bringing up Baby Bilingual describes her public library’s Writing Buddies program where high school student volunteers lead groups of at-risk fourth and fifth graders through a series of outer-space-themed writing activities. Writing prompts and resources included in the post!
- CatWay at Adventures With Kids asks What is phonics all about? Is this something I should know more about to help my child learn to read and write?
- Narelle from A Bunch of Keys has some simple suggestions for making your own literacy resources for children at home. Includes ideas for books with simple rhymes, books with puppets, books about family trips and making felt boards.
- Zoe at Playing By the Book has gone fishing for words in illustrated dictionaries to support her early reader.
Thanks for visiting our carnival, we hope you enjoy some of these posts and have found some interesting blogs.
13 comments:
Doing something like this with stickers would work well in our home - if stickers are involved interest always rockets! I know they wouldn't be reusable, like the magnets, but it might be an occasional alternative.
A good use for those letter magnets everyone has! I agree that the more hands-on reading activities you do with children, the better. Those sorts of reading activities are especially great when phonetic sounds are used!
there are never enough of those mgnetic letters! But, I do have plenty of letter stickers in my scrapbooking supplies, so that may be the way to go for us. I'm sure Princess will love to have a go at this :)
Magnets and foam letters are huge here, but I hadn't thought of writing a word and getting her to copy it. I love that they can physically play with and arrange the letters, it makes it much more tangible than squiggles on a page. And it allows kids who don't have the co-ordinaton to write yet still play around with words.
A simple, very useful idea. I'll be giving it a try since my son is just learning to write some words.
Great idea to scaffold spelling and writing tasks for kids. It takes away the demand on fine motor skills to concentrate on the phonics or visual letter combinations. Always good to mix it up a bit with spelling word lists!
Love this thank you, will certainly be giving it a go!
That looks like fun and so easy to do. Thank you :)
Kids can also "write" the letters with a finger on their leg, your arm, another child's back, or in the air.
Emergent readers working on making the connection between the letter, letter combination, or word and the spoken sound can also use their finger to draw the letters in a rimmed baking sheet full of sand, sugar, or flower.
It is a fantastic activity! I tend to use it with magnetic boards and letters for ages four and up. I just modify specifically to each child and usually will work closely with them while implementing. Great post!
Thanks for this idea. My son is probably a little young for this yet, but we'll definately keep it in mind!
it's "do" not "due"....
and one great use of tiles on the fridge (or the washing machine if your fridge is stainless) is to have kids spell with patterns for rhyming. So you start with the first sound(s) [formally called the onset] and then add the R-I-M-E rime [which is the spelling pattern/word family]. So spell c at and then ask the child to change the c to an s. ask: "Now what word is it?" then ask the child to make more words by simply changing the onset. Once that is exhausted, change the vowel. So you'd spell s it and continue. This gives kids a great sense of word manipulation and really strengthens their decoding ability!!
"Do", right you are...I suppose that's a hazard of not spell checking at 2am (not that it would've picked it up). So thanks. And it is a great idea to change out letters to create new words. Fridge magnets are great!
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