Hellobee Boards

Bob books, and the Bob app, and the Endless spelling app are good. But just chatting about it organically as it comes up in your day like you are now is the best!

We like Bob books, FlipAWord books, and Guided Science Readers level A (red) books. As others said, these are more memorization/playing with sound than the are true reading, but they’ve taught my newly 5 year old a lot of sight words and make her feel motivated to learn more.

For us, a lot was self- guided....asking how to spell “Mommy”, “Daddy”, “Love”, friend/sibling names, etc., and over time she’s memorized them. She also spells out words on signs, and has learned a lot that way (STOP was a favorite for awhile - she’d write it all the time just because she could!). I think so much depends on the kid, though. My now-seven year old was never this interested or self motivated!

My DS who is 6 started to learn to read at 4. Like actually sounding out words. We didn’t really do amything formal but we read a lot and help him when he asked along with having activity books available to him. He’s always been interested in the letters and sounds they make. Now at 6 he is a bookworm.

I think keep doing what your doing and let him lead the way and helping when he asks.

Once our students know most of their letters and some of their sounds, these are some things we do to continue nudging them in the reading process.

Introduce sight words with automaticity. The first ten we focus on are : (am, at, can, go, is, like, me, see, the, to). To introduce a new sight word we do these 4 procedures with every word:
1) What's missing? - put the word on a whiteboard and have the child look at the whole word. Turn the board around and erase a letter. Then ask the student what letter is missing? Do this a few times changing the letter. This helps them to see the word as a whole unit. They love this as it's like a game.

2) Mix and Fix - have the child make the word with magnetic letters. Then, mix them up and have the child put the letters back in the correct order.

3) Table Write - Have the child write the word on the table with just their finger. This kinaesthetic movement is really important.

4) Write and Retrieve - Have the child write the word on a whiteboard. Then, erase it and ask them to write a familiar word that they know easily (can be their name, or a previous known sight word). Erase that word and ask them to write the word being taught again. We want to see if children can retrieve the word beyond just memorization.

We do these 4 procedures with every word that we teach. It is remarkable how quickly they learn (and remember!) sight words by following them. Once a sight word has been taught, they practice building it with lots of kinaesthetic materials (wiki stix, play-doh, sand, sticks, etc)

Another thing you will want to do is establish early concepts of print. Find a very simple book (one line of text per page with a repeating pattern where only 1-2 words per page change is the best). Practice pointing to every word as you read (one to one matching), reading left to right, top to bottom, using the pictures, etc. You will want to establish the difference between a letter and a word. Ask questions like "How many words are on this page? Which word is the longest on this page? How many letters are in the word ______?"

We also continue building sounds by doing some simple word work activities. Use Elkonin boxes to work on CVC words (ie: dog, cat, map, etc). Use pictures to do some sound sorts (Ie; give pictures that start with C and pictures that start with G and sort them into two piles based on beginning sound). We also do Making Words activities - a child makes "dog" with magnetic letters then we ask them to change one letter to make the word "log", then change one letter to make the word "bog", etc. As they get more advanced you can change medial and ending sounds, add blends and make it more difficult.

Also definitely continue reading aloud to your child. Have your child make meaning out of complex texts by reading the pictures of unfamiliar and familiar books. It's OK if what is said doesn't match the words at all - they will be doing very important and deep comprehension work that will really benefit them as they get older.

SORRY for the novel - early literacy is my passion and there is nothing more exciting than supporting a child who is on the cusp of becoming a reader! Have fun!!

I really think just reading! I have a naturally linguistic kiddo an dee never did 1 flash card or sight word, we read a ton and we would play games at bedtime. Silly words, spelling words, rhyming, silly sounds, spelling. But the key is that it was all fun! He’s 6.5 now and reads about a 2nd grade level. But he still mostly chooses to have me read, so I do. Sometimes we switch pages... I also credit a few books like Little Blue Truck, The Book with no Pictures, and Elephant and Piggie (all) at increasing my son’s understanding of language and words because they are different colors and sizes and it’s really clear how each word is different. Enjoy and keep it fun!!