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Is your child in the process of learning how to read? Are you looking for some activities that you can use to help him with this learning process? Then here are some ideas to help you get started:

1.Make your child a set of flash cards with the family words. These words should include flat, chat, brat, spat, splat, drat, bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat and sat all on separate index cards. This exercise is meant to help increase your child’s reading speed by using words that he already knows. Once you have made all of these flashcards, you will want to spread them out, face down, on the table. Turn them over one at a time and ask your child to read each word to you. Then turn them back over and mix them up before having your child read them to you again.

2. Purchase a set of reading flashcards for your child. You will want to select some words from the pack that your child has already had some practice with. Your child can then read the word before turning the flashcard over in order to see that he is reading the word correctly as the word’s picture will be on the back of the card.

3. Encourage your child to take the various flashcards that he has (both the ones that you have made for him as well as the ones that you have bought for him) and read these cards to other friends and family members. You can also encourage your child to make his own flashcards. However, you should know that most children will prefer to have an adult write the flashcards for them since adults are able to do a neater job. If your child wants to make his own flashcards though you should not discourage him as this will help him to have a sense of pride in them.

4. Create a variety of flashcard games and drills to augment, not replace, the one on one work that you do with your child.

5.Once your child seems to have a firm grasp upon the words, help him to make bigger “at” words. This simply means adding more letters to “at,” including blends such as “fl” and “ch.” You can make this by presenting this exercise to your child as a challenge that you know that he can accomplish. Before doing this though, make sure that you have “at” written on one whole index card. You will then want to cut 3 other index cards in half so that you have 6 halves. On each of these halves you will want to write 1 of these 6 pairs of letters: fl, ch, br, sp, spl and dr. This will allow your child to make the words: flat, chat, brat, spat, splat and drat. Once this is done and you are ready to work with your child, put “at” down in front of you and spread the other cards around “at.” Your child can then choose 1 card, slide it over to the front of “at” and tell you what the new word is.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Teaching Tips, In Home Tutors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.