Magnetic Letter Reading Lessons

Several people have asked me about teaching phonics and reading and the best way to do it....so here's one of my lessons with my kindergartener today.

I use a book called 'The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading'. This book has 231 lessons ranging from 15-20 minutes each. They start out with learning the sounds each letter makes....by lesson 27 you start reading short three letter words; then, by the last lesson you are reading at a 4th grade reading level. It's a wonderful book and I highly recommend it!

Now lots of children learn in different ways....so instead of just tossing a book or a workbook down and doing the pages, you should add some hands on stuff in there! Make it fun! One thing I did that worked really well for my girls was to buy the magnetic letters (usually found in the $1 toy section at Walmart) and do reading lessons with those. Here's how I do it:

Set up a magnetic board or surface with a short two-letter word that you can add a letter in front of to make a three letter word. I used the word 'at' and at the top I placed the letters we'd be using to make more words.



You start out with your base word and have the child sound it out. Once they understand that word drag a letter from the top. Ask them what sound the letter makes....my example, I used 'b'. Then cover the 'b' and ask what this word (point to 'at') was again. Uncover the 'b' and smoosh the letters together and have the child sound them out again.

Once your child gets the hang of the 'at' words move on to another two letter word and go from there! My girls do really well when I give them more hands on activities instead of just using the books and workbooks....they tend to drool a bit when we do that!

Happy Reading!!!!

Pilgrims and the Mayflower

This year we are devoting an entire week to our study of Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, and Indians. I've recently discovered the Magic Tree House series and how wonderful it is to supplement our history lessons with it! So here's what we did for todays lesson:

First we read the first two chapters of "Thanksgiving on Thursday" (Magic Tree House #27) by Mary Pope Osborne.

After finishing up chapter 2, the girls were excited to begin working on their lapbooks! So while I read chapter 1 in the Magic Tree House Research Guide about Pilgrims (about Pilgrims and the crossing on the Mayflower) the girls colored the cover page on the lapbook.

Here's a couple of pictures of my little ones hard at work :)

After I finished the short reading, Sara and I began filling in the different sections of her lapbook that pertained to today. We talked about who the Pilgrims were (where they came from and where they were going; what sort of jobs they had; their search for religious freedom). We discussed the Mayflower's size and I showed them a picture of what it looked like. The Research Guide also had a picture of the Mayflower's insides so we talked about the different levels and the living conditions there. We also talked about the different supplies the Pilgrims would need for a two month trip across the ocean.

We talked about the Mayflower Compact and the rules it included. We also talked about how it was the first form of a government for America. As Sara was copying the 3 rules in her lapbook, I read the girls the actual version of the Mayflower Compact.

I leave you with a joke....

What happened when the turkey got into a fight?

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It got the stuffing knocked out of it!!!!

Thanksgiving Lapbooks

I finally broke down and decided we (me and my two younger daughters) were going to try lapbooking...so I searched the web for templates pertaining to Thanksgiving. I came across this really cool site that has TONS of great looking lapbooks!

http://www.knowledgeboxcentral.com/

Now I did a search on "Thanksgiving" and came up with quite a few results. I browsed through them all, but ended up choosing this one...

http://www.knowledgeboxcentral.com/thla.html

It seemed a bit pricey to me, but then I noticed that if you signed up for their newsletter they would send you a coupon code for $10 off your next purchase! So I signed up and ended up getting this lapbook for $5....it was really worth it because it included not only the templates, but assembly instructions (great for my first time putting one of these together!), all sorts of links to other websites with more educational things for my girls to do, and last, but not least, ALL the information I needed to teach the girls about Thanksgiving and complete their lapbooks!

In all, I'm glad I broke down and purchased this one instead of trying to make my own....saved me lots of time and I know the girls are going to love it!