Growing Readers

Are you Growing a Reader? Homeschooling your early reader? No need to buy an expensive curriculum to get your child off to a great start at reading. Do you want to avoid tedious, boring worksheets and instead learn through engaging hands on activities and play? Here are a collection of links on teaching your child to read and write for free:

Sight Words or Phonics? How about a balanced approach?

Read some background on using a balanced literacy approach to teach your child to read. What does your Kindergartner need to learn in reading? See the list of Common Core Kindergarten Standards and links to activities to teach those skills to your emergent reader.

What do I need to Buy?

The short answer: nothing. You can do all of the lessons and activities here using books from the library and things you already have around the house like paper, pens, chalk, and index cards. In this post I suggest some possible things you can buy to enhance the activities. These are supplies that you will be able to use for years, not just for a couple of lessons. Manipulatives like a good set of magnetic letters can be used from preschool into elementary school, beginning with basic letter identification, on to phonics, building sight words, word families and complex multisyllabic spelling words.

Shared Literature

Read, read, read to your child. Reading aloud to your child is the best thing you can do to grow a reader. Go beyond reading aloud and teach your child reading skills while enjoying great literature! (Preschool, Pre-K, Kindergarten)

Early Alphabet Learning and the Name Game

How to begin teaching the alphabet and other early literacy skills to your preschooler or Kindergartner. (Preschool, Pre-K, Kindergarten)

More Alphabet Learning and Emergent Reader Skills at STOP and Learn to Read
Using only a stop sign you can teach the following skills:

• letter versus word (early reading skills)
• capital versus lower case letters (alphabet)
• letter identification (alphabet)
• letter/sound connection (phonics)
• letter formation (writing)
• first letter and last letter (early reading skills)
• counting (math)
• reading left to right (early reading skills)

Kindergarten Sight Words and Early Reading Skills

What you need to know to get started teaching your Kindergartner to read including a look at some of the Common Core Standards for Kindergarten reading. (Kindergarten)

Kindergarten Sight Word Sentences

After you know about teaching sight words to your Kindergartner you are ready to move on to sentences. (Kindergarten)

Kindergarten Sight Words Reading Books

Once you start introducing your child to the sight words he is ready for his first emergent-reader book. (Kindergarten)

Beginning Phonics for Emergent Readers

Once your child knows most of the letters of the alphabet and their sounds he is ready to learn to "sound out" simple CVC words. This post shows you lots of hands on multi-sensory ways to practice early phonics. (Kindergarten, First Grade)

Learn 37 Words and Know how to Read and Write Over 500 Words!

Your child can learn more phonics "rules" by learning several words with common letter patterns. When your child learns to make analogies and manipulate onset and rime they can quickly read and write hundreds of new words. These are better known as word families. (Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade)