Snapshot of a Prekindergarten Child 

Pre-kindergartners are children who are 3 and 4 years old. They are full of energy, and ready to be molded for social, physical, emotional and cognitive development.  We have to understand that all children develop at different rates and we need to be patient.  The link below will give you a snapshot of what pre reading skills you want to help your pre-kindergartner  with.  Support your child the best you can, every family is different and every child is different.  Have fun and happy reading!

Snapshot of a Pre Kindergartner

Reading Stamina

Reading Stamina

Help your child build their reading stamina. Stamina is the ability to do something for a long period of time.  I share with my children and students my running experience. Running has become a passion of mine for many reasons; exercise, community, fun and enjoyment. I was never a runner but over the past few years I have been training for races-5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons and now a full marathon! In order to do this I had to train my body to sustain running for longer and longer periods of time. I relate this story to reading. You have to practice, and practice and read and read in order to get better and better and do it for longer and longer.

Ways to support your child in building their ability to read for longer periods of time.

• ·       Set goals-start low and then slowly build up. Graph it, chart it, and celebrate it! Here's a chart you can use 
• My Reading
• ·       Offer cozy inviting environments to read-beanbag chairs, forts, cozy chairs
• ·       Have your child chose books that interest THEM!
• ·       Set some guidelines-stay in one spot, start right away and read the whole time. Parents can be on hand to help and assist when needed.
• ·       Remember that readers can read pictures, words, and retell stories they have read before.

 

Why I started the Reading FISH

Disclaimer:  I am sitting at dance waiting for my daughter, will proof later. 

How I got here and why I started The Reading FISH.  I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. From a young age of 8 I can remember playing school in my living room. . 

After high school I went to school to be a teacher, became certified elementary school teacher. While looking for a job I substitute taught and went for my masters in Literacy and Special Education- two fields I knew would help me be a great teacher.

During my graduate studies I didn’t quite understand what it meant to go to school and become certified birth through grade 6 really meant, I was only 22 and had no clue. I used to joke around and say, “Yeah,I am going to teach your baby to read”.  I had no idea what that really meant, I mean come on, babies reading, really? 

It wasn’t until I started to work more with students during my field work and watch how I can really make a difference in helping a child read.  But, that baby part still baffled me. I learned about how children develop and how language morphs and connects with reading I just never got to see it happen, until……I had kids of my own. 

When I had my first child, I had already been working as a reading teacher for 4 years.  Teaching reading was already automatic.  I read to my daughter every day for hours, talked to her all the time, showed her things, gave her experiences did everything I could to give her language.  At a young age, I started doing the things I did every day when I taught reading.  Showed her letters, talked about sounds, broke words up into sounds, blended words, pointed to words, asked her to point to pictures, asked questions and the list continued.  Here is where what came natural to me started to show her growing into a reader.  At the age of 20 months she was able to read the word ‘the’ and use picture clues to read a simple book.  Was in memorized?  Did she just use pictures? Did she know what she was doing?  Whatever the answer may be, she was reading! She was reading before she went to Pre-Kindergarten.  I couldn’t believe it, me and her father were her first teachers- taught her to read! 

My daughter was 17 months when my second child was born.  He was a little bit of a different story.  I got nervous when he was a baby because he didn’t seem to like books like his sister.  I kept doing what I did with her and plugged away even when I thought he wasn’t listening and sure enough with all our hard work he began reading before school too!  Now don’t get me wrong, I did all of this just by playing! I didn’t sit them down and make them do ‘school work’ I just incorporated playing with language and reading books to our everyday life

Being a parent of young reading children I learned that people would be surprised that they can read.  I told them some things I would do and my friends would be like, “wow, I never thought of that’.  For me the ideas and activities came natural to me and I thought everyone knew what to do.  But I was wrong not everyone does, and that’s ok. And yes of course every child is different but no matter what the case is learning begins in the home and here I was then inspired to help families raise readers. 

Vowel Maze

Vowel Maze

 

This is a great activity for children who confuse vowel sounds when reading.

To help your child ‘warm up’ before reading have them practice their vowel sounds by using this vowel maze.

Refer back to my post on teaching vowels and the silly stories to teach the sounds. Teaching Vowel Sounds

To use print the Vowel Maze. Have your child put their finger/a car or something else creative on the first letter and have them trace the line as they say the vowel sound until they reach the picture.  Once they reach the picture they will say the name on the picture.

Example: “/a……………………………/, apple”

 

The Camel Rule

The Camel Rule

Cam    el

So we have gone over the ‘rabbit’ rule and now it’s time to learn the next rule. Like all syllable separation rules you want your child to look for two vowels that are separated.  In the camel rule you will find two vowels (a and e) separated by one consonant (m).  You will scoop or chunk the consonant with the first syllable. Both of these syllables are closed, therefore the vowel makes a short sound.  

Click to learn about the syllable types:

Syllable Types

Sample words to separate:

seven

robin

cabin

topic

limit

solid

satin

wagon

salad

lemon

edit

panic 

Phonemic Awareness Mat

Phonemic Awareness Mat Activities

The ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words is a very important and foundational skill to have.  Students who have difficulty with this skill or who don't have practice enough practice can have difficulty with reading and spelling in the future.

Here are is list of activities you can do using the mat below to practice/play with phonemic awareness

• parent says a three letter or sound word; (mat), child should touch each box and say the sounds the correlating sound (/m/  /a/  /t/).
• Parent says a word and child isolates the beginning, middle, or ending sound. 
• Do the above activity and have the child say the word without the first sound.  (mat)   The child says (at).
• Building words.  Have your child build a three sound word (hot). Say the sounds by touching the blocks then add the letters that correlate with those sounds.  Parent "take the word hot and change it to not".  (do not move the letters from the mat, say the sounds of the new word and have your child try to figure out which sound changes).
• Building words-manipulate the first and last sounds as well.

Using letter tiles children can manipulate the sounds to make new words.
Phonemic Awareness Mat

Blending

Blending Sounds

You are all excited, your child is able to identify all the letter sounds! They are ready for the next step in reading.  They sit down in front of a three letter word like 'bus', they say all the sounds; /b/  /u/   /s/  and then tell you that the word is dad.  Aghhhh.....you think 'what happened'?  They said all the right sounds why can't they read the word? 

The ability to blend sounds to build words from individual sounds in sequence can be tricky at first.  Your child has not figured out how to smoothly connect the sounds.  Here are a few strategies you can try at home. 

• You tell your child that you are going to tell them a word that will sound a bit strange and you want them to guess what the word is.  You say to your child guess this word; /s/ /u/ /n/. What word is that.  If your child doesn't get it right away, hold onto the sounds you can and really exaggerate the word.  You can also give them a few picture clues at a time. 

Watch:
Word Play

• Point to the letters as your child reads the word and have them hold onto the sounds until you move your finger.  Now some sounds cannot or should not be held (b,c, d, g, h, j, k, p, q, t, w, x)  If these sounds are held your child will begin to place a vowel sound after if like (buh).  

• Talk about word families.  Have your child practice reading common chunks found in words like -ap, an, in, at, am, op, un. Make word slides to help them practice reading words fluently with word chunks.  The best part is that all of these words rhyme making the endings sound the same! 

I made one out of paint chips for my kiddos at home.  They loved the colors! Best part it was free and easy.