Lexy’s Journey into Reading

Shining Our Lights Preschool has just started a new linky for all those posts about teaching our children to read. We have been doing lots of reading activities around here lately, so I decided to join up this week for Teach Me To Read Thursdays. If you’re teaching a little one to read, hop on over there to glean some wonderful ideas!

Lexy began her journey into reading about 6 months ago. She had known her letters and sound for a long time and had started blending them a little on her own. So, since she was eager to learn and seemed ready, I began by introducing her to word families. We played many games from Happy Phonics and some that I printed off from various websites.

Since that time, we have started Kindergarten. The curriculum that we are using, Heart of Dakota, recommends Reading Made Easy for our Phonics lessons. However, Lexy is hit or miss on whether she enjoys the lessons. So, I am not pushing the formal lessons. I am eagerly awaiting All About Reading Level 1 to come out mid June. In the meantime, we are working on sight words and reviewing word families.

We recently made our very own Phonics Reader. I wanted to find some phonics readers that went right along with what we were working, and since I wasn’t able to find anything…We made our own. It turned out to be LOTS of fun. I had intended for Book 1 to take a week for us to create. Lexy enjoyed it so much that we did it all in one day.

Book 1 is titled: The Man and the Cat

Author: Mommy (once we get used to doing this, I’d like Lexy to start writing the stories).

Illustrator: Lexy

After I wrote the words to the story, Lexy would read each page and illustrate it.

The last page lists the sight words and word families used in our story.

Lexy has been reading her first story everyday this week. It has definitely increased her confidence in reading! She’s already asking to make Book 2.

Reading Made Easy introduces sight words into the phonics program. However, we are also using the sight word printables found on the You Can Read program on 1+1+1=1.

We used the Sight Word Puzzles to cut and glue onto paper.

Her favorite activity (sorry no picture) from these printables was finding the words she knew in sentences. She realized that she new many of the words that were not her sight words, and the few she didn't she was able to use picture clues. She found great satisfaction in being able to read the whole page!

As we are doing this program, we are adding the sight words to her caterpillar.

I am also planning on adding in some sight word activities from Home Grown Hearts. There are so many great ideas here! We have used these ideas in the past, and Lexy always enjoys them. The more sight words Lexy knows, the greater her confidence in reading!

Teaching reading has been almost as much fun as reading! I’m looking forward to reading many more great ideas in the coming weeks on Teach Me to Read Thursdays!

Also, to see what other preschoolers are up to, be sure to check out the Preschool Corner.