Thursday, March 5, 2009

More Reading Activities

I have been working with E all week teaching her reading. If you change the activity every few minutes, it is surprising how long a child of 4 or 5 can keep interested in doing reading activities.

We played matching games with pictures and word cards. I get pictures off of Microsoft Office Download Clip Art. It is fantastic. I make cards with Short Vowel words. Here is an example of a page. I print it on card stock and have them ready for all kinds of fun games.

One game I do when I have something I want them to learn is the Slapping game. I set two word cards in front of her and she has to slap the one I say. For example, I put down "the" and "this". I use this a lot with the sight words she needs to know. Then I put down another word card and we do a few slaps then I add another one. We get up to about six words. This helps her read them faster.

Anything can be a reward. She reads a list of words and the little remote control dog we bought her at Walgreens barks and says "Good job."

I love to use a stop watch. If she is reading her pile of short U words. I start the stop watch and she reads as many as she can in one minute. Then the next time she does it she gets a smartie for each one she reads more than she did the first time. So if she read 16 the first time, if she reads 19 the next time she gets three smarties. Games like this or counting who won in memory are also excellent for their counting and math understanding.

Another game she love is the Quiet Game. I set four words out in front of her. I have ten in all but just four are set out at a time. I act out a word and she picks it up. I set out another word so there are still four words in front of her. Then I act out another word. Neither of us can say any thing till she has picked out all ten words. We can take turns being the one who acts out the words.

Here are some work sheets we did this week. She likes to cut and paste so she cuts out the words and pastes them into the correct box.

3 comments:

Christine said...

How do you go about teaching your child to read if you read and speak to them only in Spanish at home? Should you begin with Spanish and then introduce English books later when they've got the hang of it?

Tati said...

I am using a combination of teaching them in English and Spanish. We speak only in Spanish 3 days of the week (except when we are playing with friends that speak only in English or we are practicing reading). I decided I would teach my kids to read in English first and after they know how to read in English, then read in Spanish. I guess it is whatever language you want to be more dominant for them. I chose English since it is both my husband's and my first language, so I want that to be their strongest language. How will you teach them Spanish?

Christine said...

Both my husband and I began with all three in Spanish. I suddenly stopped speaking Spanish last year around this time. Our move to Turkey influenced this decision. So my husband still speaks Spanish to them consistently but they have stopped responding in Spanish. The older two spoke great last year but I really felt that having no English here in Turkey would distance them further from their family members when we do visit them. I do believe that we can bring it back strong when we return to the states someday. As long as we keep doing fun games regularly. Do you ever think about taking your kids abroad in the future to immerse them completely?