Welcome back to Read Not Guess. Today is a review day. We’ll practice blending some words and then show you how to play the "Word Builder" game with your kids.
Let’s get started.
Letter Quiz
We’ve worked through 19 letters so far. Now let’s check for understanding. Ask your child to say the correct sounds as they point to the letters:
b
o
g
w
f
Did they get them right? If not, have them keep trying until they say the sound clearly and cleanly.
Word Practice
We’re going to work on “blending” two letters at the beginning of words. Your child can start slowly by saying each sound individually, but each time, they should try to say it just a bit faster.
Let’s start with this one:
r u sh
r ush
rush
Now add the “c” sound at the beginning:
c r u sh
cr ush
crush
Did they get it right? If they're reading it as "cuh-ru-ush" at the end, ask them to do it faster until they are reading the word "crush" clearly and cleanly. Let’s do a few more:
c r a sh
cr ash
crash
And:
b r u sh
br ush
brush
And:
f l u sh
fl ush
flush
Word Builder Game
This game was submitted by a ReadNotGuess parent. She cut out small strips of paper and wrote letters on some and word families on others. It looked like this:
Either you or your child can pick a few sounds to focus on at a time.
Ask your child to say the correct sounds as they point to the letters.
To turn this into a game, spread out all the letters (and word families) on the table. Challenge your child to blend multiple sounds together into a word. For example, you might pick "r" and "an." If they can correctly sound out "ran," they get to take those sounds off the table and keep them in their pile.
Now it's their turn to give you a challenge. Don't worry if they're not real words--the goal at this point is to work on sounding out the letters, blending the sounds into words, and reading the words left to right.
If you correctly sound out the word your child gives you, take the sounds off the table and put them in your pile. (You may want to purposefully get some wrong to see if they can catch your mistakes.)
Play until the table is empty, and then see who has the biggest pile.
That’s it for today. We’ll see you next time.