i teach at a pre-school & kindergarten, any idea of some activities relating to phonics??
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Follow the school’s curriculum.
Starfall.com has lots of activity sheets and stuff on line or kids can do activities on line also if you have computer access. Pick a letter a week and do lots of activities around that sounds so they hear lots o different “b” words (for example) for show and tell have them bring items that begin with the letter “B”. Tracing, coloring, gluing, painting B words and the letter B.
I really do recommend using a curriculum it will save you a lot of time and give you a structure to follow and will make things easier and more systematic.
With Children Learning Reading you can train your youngster how to separate seems and separate words into phonemes, an essential point as soon as your kid is simply understanding how to spell.
The studying program from Children Learning Reading program makes it simple for kids to read rapidly and properly, from simple phrases to phrases until they understand to see stories.
This can have lots of variations, I spy something that rhymes with ‘bat’, ‘fish’ or whatever.
An important prelearning skill for phonics is the ability to hear similarities and differences. For example , that cat and hat rhyme and that church and children start with the same sound. If they don’t have that, you will have lots of trouble teaching them phonics.
Children don’t actually learn to hear differences, they learn to hear similarities. They learn this through rhyme. All cultures, (or at least all the one’s I’ve studied which are Western ones) have early reading poems throughout their history. (Think Mother Goose and all those little poems chanted on Mommy’s knee). These were very good for language development. Unfortunately, today, Mother Goose is falling by the wayside for non-rhyming books. (Clifford, Dora, etc) While children would have been exposed to hundreds of hours of poetry before learning to read before, nowadays they get very little. You should read at least one poem per day to them (Mother Goose, which you can ask them to learn, too, A.A. Milne, Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein’s A Crack in the Sidewalk, Dennis Lee etc. are all good resources). Get them to chant along with you or after you if the poem seems suited to it; that helps the awareness of same sounds develop.
Another game is having them react to a given sound. For example “When I say a word that starts with ‘M’ (again say the sound, not the name of the letter) clap your hands. (Or jump up or hop on one foot or whatever they are doing that game). Then say a list of words at a moderate pace:
mud, today, Monday, hop, milk, monkey etc.
Some will react, some will mostly react, some will be completely clueless. You will easily be able to do a quick mental assessment even while playing the game. Those who are lost will have to be taken in a small group for extra help while others are at activity time.
You can vary this game a lot, have them react to words that end with a sound: ends with ‘t’ . Then you can give a list like:
hit, spend, lost, whistle (very tricky, that one as the sound is in the middle, not the end) tree, etc.
You can also do this with rhyming words:
Jump up when I say a word that rhymes with ‘cat’.
House, mat, car (tricky again because it starts with the same sound but doesn’t rhyme.) If the class isn’t up to this say the rhyming word and other word in pairs each time: ‘cat’ ‘house’ ‘mat – cat’ ‘car – cat’.
You can also say them this way for immediate clarification and reinforcement should a particular word give them trouble. If playing the game with a remedial/ beginning group you may have to play it this way also.
If you have some really sharp 5 and six year olds you can try this: Have them with little blackboards or white boards at their places. Let them write a word down: perhaps ‘cat’.
They go through intial, middle and final letter changes to get new words:
For example: Write ‘cat’ (then put in on the board in case they are getting frustrated)
Change it now to make ‘hat’ (you can do the same on yours after a minute)
Change it now to make ‘fat’, Keep going for other rhymes.
As the groups advance you can have them change final sounds “hat’ ‘ham’ and middle sounds “hat – hit” etc. Introduce each one carefully and do it for many days before moving on to a new one. Then you can mix them up
“cat, hat, hit, hip” etc.
You may only want to do this with small groups as some students may not be ready for this. Be very careful not to frustrate them at this age. They are very sensitive and developing their self image. We must not teach them that they are ‘dumb’ (their words) along with teaching them curriculum. Many boys become frustrated with reading when introduced very early. Make sure you give each one an activity or questions at which they can succeed each day, especially to wrap up a session.
These games can be played for as little as 30 seconds at a time (and often are) and can be played spontaneously anywhere (the gym, the carpet, in line etc. )
Good Luck.
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