Reading Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Preschool Sight Word Reading and Writing Pages

November 29, 2023 By Deirdre

Preschool-level sight word pages will be fun to explore. After reading each of the words displayed on a present children will write the word under the gift box. Children can write the sight word anywhere in the box. The goal of the activity isn’t to write perfectly in the box. After reading each word, the goal is to have children write the words.

The pages feature a gift graphic that could be associated with Christmas, they could be used for any holiday that features a gift or a celebration. It will be up to you to decide just when you want to pull them out.

Getting the Sight Word Pages

First, you download the set.

Preschool Sight Word Pages Download

Second, if you don’t have Acrobat Reader please download it. The set is an Acrobat Reader PDF file.

Third, go to your download file and open the set.

Exploring the Pages

There are twelve sight words on each page. Working on a few words and mastering them is a good idea. It can be overwhelming to work on a whole list of words.

Children may need to go over the sight words displayed on the preschool sight word pages before exploring the pages. They can write the words on index cards themselves. That would be a great way to create an introduction to the words on the pages.

Children working with an adult or a peer can work through the words as they work through the pages.

How?

Building the words with pipe cleaners and reading them after they are built.
Writing the words with a wet paintbrush on the sidewalk.
Writing the words with watercolors on paper.
Building the words with magnetic letters.
Writing a word and tracing over it with different colored crayons.
Writing the words on a white board.

More Sight Word Activities

Sight Word Eye Chart

Truffula Tree Sight Word Activity

Reading Dolch Words with Crabby the Crab Printables

July 13, 2017 By Deirdre

The summertime is a great time to explore sight words. This printable crab names Crabby and his lists of the first 100 sight words will give your children at home or students at school the opportunity to work on reading Dolch words.

Exploring Dolch Words with Crabby

Preparing the Activity

Before you can start exploring Dolch words with Crabby, you will need to print out the Reading Dolch Words with Crabby Crab. Both the Crabby word slides and the Dolch words on slides will need to be printed out on card stock. You may want to laminate them. They will be more durable if they have been covered. They Dolch words will also slip more easily through the slot in the Crabby’s slide if they are covered.

Ready to Start Exploring the Dolch Words

Once you have your slides covered and cut out, your children can slip the first slide with Dolch words into place. Your children will need to slip the words up so that they can see the first word just above Crabby’s claws.

As they read each of the words, they can pull up the slide until the next word is showing. Your children will continue this process until they have read all the words on that slide.

If they miss any words, you can have them move those words back to just above Crabby’s claws one at a time and try them again.

Making Reading Dolch Words Fun

Some children may think that just reading Dolch words for a list is boring. After reading through each of the word lists once or twice, you can offer your children the opportunity to say them in fun ways.

You could ask your children to try to come up with a voice that a crab might use to read words. If they have trouble coming up with a voice, you could suggest that they read them like one of the voices listed below.

Fun Voices

A crab might talk like a pirate.
It might have a very grouchy voice.
The crab might talk in a soft whisper so predator might not find him.
A loud voice might be used because he loves words.

Working with More Words

Once your children have mastered the first 100 Dolch words, you can easily create more word slides on tagboard that are the same size and shape as the slides in the set. You could even place vocabulary words from ocean themed books on words slides for your children to explore.

Crab Themed Books

The links below are affiliate links.

A House for Hermit Crab

Crab Moon

Clumsy Crab

If you like this ocean themed printable, here are some more you will love:

Reading and Building Words Under the Sea

Find, Count and Graph Ocean Objects

Ocean Themed Counting Worksheets with LEGO

What Time is it Mr. Hermit Crab?

Teaching Feelings with Jellyfish

Preschool Reading – Reading and Building Words Under the Sea Printable

July 12, 2017 By Deirdre

Whether you want your children at home to explore word families, short vowel sounds or build words this fun reading and building words set will be fun to explore. While this was designed as a preschool reading activity, you can totally use it with older children.

Preschool Reading Activity- Build and Reading Words

Before you can start this preschool reading activity, you will need to download a copy of Reading and Building Words Under the Sea Printables. Since your children will want to use this activity over and over again, you may want to print this activity out of card stock.

Exploring This Preschool Reading Activity

There are a variety of ways to explore this preschool reading activity. While I am going to share a few of the ways I have come up with, you will probably be able to come up with much more to do with these printables.

One Vowel at a Time

Your children can explore one vowel at a time. They can try to make as many words as they can with just one of the vowels on the mat. You may want them to read as well as spell each of the words. Then they can move on to another vowel.

Make a Word for Each Vowel

This preschool reading activity invites children to come up with one word for each of the vowels using the fish letters available. When each vowel has a letter in front of and behind each vowel, they can read the words.

Word Family

Children are asked to place a letter behind one of the vowels. They are then to create as many words as they can that are in that word family by placing fish letters in front of the vowel.

Adding Just Two Letters

Just two letters will be used in this activity. Your children are asked to place one consonant letter in front of the letter a and one after it to make a word. Then they will slide the two letters down to the letter e to see if they make a word. They will continue to slide the letters down the rest of the vowels to see if they make words.

It will be fun to see how many words those two letters make. Once they have tried making words with those two letters, they can select two more letters to try to build words with.

If you like this ocean themed preschool activity, here are some more ocean themed printables you will want to explore:

Ocean Playdough Counting Mats

Hands On Shape Sorting Fish

No-Prep Ocean Themed Addition Word Printables

Find, Count, and Create a Bar Graph Ocean Activity

Ocean Themed Counting Worksheets with LEGO

What Time is it Mr. Hermit Crab?

Teaching Feelings with Jellyfish

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets

August 10, 2015 By Deirdre

Over the last few years I have created a number for language arts worksheets and printables for my son to work on. They have been gathered together in the post so that you can used them with your children. I hope you have as much fun with them as we have.

Language Arts Worksheets

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Build The Alphabet with LEGO Light Sabers

These LEGO themed light sabers can be used to build the letters of the alphabet. The free printable has light sabers for various sizes that can be used for letter building.

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Sight Word Scarecrow Game

A printable scarecrow themed game board can be used to work on sight words or really any skills that your children to need focus on.

How-to-Use-LEGO-and-Reading-Worksheets-To-Explore-Colors

Fill in the Color Word Sentences for LEGO

I composed to language art worksheets that have blanks where color words should be. Your children can use various colored LEGO to fill in the blanks. These are a little like Mad Libs!

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

This Mouse Needs a House Reading Comprehension Sheets

I was given the opportunity to review the wonderful children’s book This Mouse Needs a House. I created to language arts worksheets that give children the opportunity work on reading comprehension skills. Children can read the book on their own with as a class and then share what they remember from the book.

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Spelling Trace and Write

This spelling practice printable was placed in a picture frame. My son was able to write each spelling word I called out to him on the frame’s glass. When we were done, it was super easy to clean off the glass.

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Summer Writing Journal Prompts

Some children have trouble knowing what to write in their journals. They need something to inspire them. I made this list of summer writing prompts for my son. He is just the kind of child the needs a little inspiration before writing.

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Printable Sight Word Spiders for Floor Webs

This set of printable spiders has a blank area for you or your children to write in sight words they need to work on. We explored the sight word spiders on a tape web in our garage.

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Chicken Themed Letter Recognition

This is one of those language arts worksheets that you complete by rolling dice. I made lowercase letter dice for my son to roll. My son had to color in the uppercase letter that matched the letter he rolled.

The link below is an affiliate link.

All you need to make your own wooden letter dice are small wood cubes and colored dot stickers.

Awesome Language Arts Worksheets and Learning Printables

Writing Sight Words on a Rainbow Printable

The goal of this worksheet is to write each of the sight words on the cloud on a one of the band of the rainbow. They can write each word as many times as they can on its band of the rainbow.

We had fun exploring, reviewing and learning using each of these language arts worksheets. I hope you will too. Please let me know which ones you decide to try with your children in a comment below or on my Facebook page.

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Introducing A Fun Way to Encourage Summer Reading

May 19, 2015 By Deirdre

The summer is a perfect time of the year to explore different genres or types of books. I have created a summer reading punch card for you to give your children. It lists all different kinds of books. The card doesn’t ask children to read one of each type of book. It asks them to read some of them. I want kids to have the freedom to make a few book genre choices.

I have notice during my years as a teacher that some children tend to read the same types of books over and over again. While I rejoice that they are reading, I have tended to encourage them to read lots of types of books. They may gravitate back to their favorite type of books, but this gives them an opportunity to see what else is out there.

Why Summer Reading Should Include a Variety of Types of Books?

According to Read to Succeed – “Different types of genre books are associated with different amounts and types of language and each will encourage a different dialog or conversation with children.”
According to the Huffington Post’s article How Kids Benefit from Reading a Variety Books– “More book variety grows their entire world. Your child’s vocabulary will improve. It fosters skill development and a lifelong love of reading for generations to come.”

The punch card mentions that there will be a prize when children have received all their hole punches. This prize could be something small like a bookmark or a big the book of their choice at your local bookstore.

Hint:

If you have reluctant reader, you could read through each book together or listen to them on CD. The whole idea is to open the door for new types of books to enter your children’s lives.

During the summer I will be sharing book lists that feature each of these different genres. I hope you will stop by to check them out.

If you try decide to take on this summer reading challenge , please leave me a comment below telling me about how it is going or stop by my Facebook page share a book you have read that you loved.

How To Find a Little Free Library Near You

May 18, 2015 By Deirdre

When I first head of Little Free Libraries a few years ago I searched on the Little Free Library site and found a Little Free Library about a hour away from us. What fun I thought to road trip to one. I packed a picnic lunch, JDaniel and his teddy bear in the car and off we went to find it.

After learning about a Little Free Library opening down the road from us in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, I searched the Little Free Library database and found that there are three Little Free Library that have opened within 10 or 15 minutes of our house.

How exciting it is to have libraries we can stop at often to pick up a new book. It is also a great opportunity to share books with others.

Two of the Little Free Libraries are on the same street in the same housing development. There must be a lot of readers living there.

We were surprised to see that each library is unique. They have the same basic structure, but are each decorated in their own way.

JDaniel noticed that one had a bench right beside it. He commented that they must know people will love digging into their new books right away.

Does this make you want to start your own Little Free Library?

The Journal Sentinel has a wonderful article on things to think about before making one.

The Little Free Library has a number of links to library building plans.

I found the book The Little Free Library Book on Amazon that shares about Little Free Libraries. It looks wonderful.

Enjoying the Little Free Libraries Near You

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we made our first library search an outing. We searched house for books to give to the library. We packed a lunch. We brought a friend to enjoy the trip.

Whether you decide to make your trip to a Little Free Library an outing or a stop while you run errands is up to you. Either way you will want to start looking through your book to decide which ones you are ready to share.We have found books for adults and children in all the libraries we have visited.

Have you ever been to a Little Free Library?

How to Use LEGO & Reading Worksheets to Explore Colors

May 8, 2015 By Deirdre

I have been sharing fun LEGO activities all week. After reading about today’s activity, I hope you will check out my LEGO print made party placemat, Counting Bees activity and the Draw and Plan It activity. Today’s activity uses reading cloze or fill in the blank reading worksheets. Children read what is on the page and fill in the missing words. In a traditional reading cloze kids try to fill in the that they think comes closest to the missing words by writing it in the blank spaces. This activity asks children to Fill in the Blanks with Color Cubes or LEGOS. The missing words on both reading worksheets are color words.

When my son and I did this activity, I didn’t tell him to place what he thought was the perfect brick of the perfect color in the blank spaces. I wanted him to have fun creating funny sentences.

The beauty of placing LEGO on the blank lines is that you can try a variety of colors to fill in the blank. The colors can be what they would be in real life or silly like the ones we used.

One of the reading worksheets shares a fun poem about rainy weather. The second of the reading worksheets shares silly sentences that I composed. You may look at the reading worksheets and think of fun sentences of your own that you would rather use. Feel free to do that. Your children may enjoy coming up with their own fun or silly sentences for you or other children to fill in.

The goal of this activity is for children to interact with words that they can read. This activity opens the door for kids to play with words and bring their on meaning to them. Each time they place a LEGO in a blank space they can totally change the word picture that sentence creates.

If you try this LEGO activity , please leave me a comment below telling me about how it went or share a picture of it on my Facebook page. If you are looking for more LEGO learning games, you will find a number of them on my LEGO Learning Activities Pinterest board.

Pick Up Sticks Sight Word Games

April 19, 2015 By Deirdre

You probably have a bunch of word lists that your kids have brought home from school or worked with at home. You can develop a compiled list of sight words from those lists. That list can be used to create great sight word games. We have used our list to explore words on a taped spider web and by hanging tissue paper leaves in the correct order to create words. Just recently I wrote some of this year’s sight words on wooden chopsticks. We used them to play a bunch of sight word games.

The link below is an affiliate link.

Tips for Making Your Pick Up Sticks

The words were written on the chopsticks with traditional markers because of that the letters got a little blurry. (I really need to invest in some Sharpie Twin Tip Permanent Markers, Fine & Ultra-Fine Points, Black, 4 Pack (32175PP).) Another thing I need to do is write the below the line letters (Letters like g and q.) a little higher up on the chopsticks.

The letters were written on only one side of a chopstick. You may choose write a word on the front and back of a chopstick. I figured children could just turn the chopstick over to see the word it if was faced down.

Various Sight Word Games

The First of the Sight Word Games

All of the sight word pick up sticks were gathered up in one hand and dropped onto a plastic mat. (The plastic mat was selected because the sticks on the bottom would slide easily off the mat.) Then we took turns trying to pull out a chopstick out of the pile. If the stick was successfully picked up and the words was read correctly, the stick was added to the readers success pile.

If the stick moved another stick or was misread, it was slipped back into the pile.

The Second of the Sight Word Games

To insure that the sticks end up upside the players of the game will build a pile of chopsticks with the words faced down. In this version of the game the players will not get to see what word they are removing for the stack. It will be a surprise.

We found that kids tried to pick words they thought were easy in the first version of the sight word games. In this version they only knew what the word would be if they selected a stick that someone had to put back in the pile.

The Third of the Sight Word Games

This version of the sight word games is played backwards. Children are given a equal number of the sight word chopsticks. They will take turns reading the words on their sticks. If they read the word correctly, they can add it to the pile of sticks. If the stick rolls or falls off the stack, then they have to place in back in their pile to try adding again later.

To make this version very challenging the sticks can be place on an over turned jar lid. It will be harder to balance the word sticks on the lid.

The Fourth of the Sight Word Games

This version is a twist on the first game. Children have to share a word that rhymes with the word they have selected as well as reading the word.

Here are a number of other sight word games and activities:

Dolch Sight Word Hopscotch

Sight Word Cup Stacking

Sight Word Tree Activity

Sight Word Game- Apple Tree Words

Writing Sight Words on a Rainbow

If you do try any of the above sight words activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

Making Learning Fun with Rainbows

March 9, 2015 By Deirdre

Somewhere over, under, and on rainbow children can explore learning concepts. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet arranged in arcs just seem perfect for activities and games. I have shared a number of rainbow learning activities. Several other blogs have shared amazing ways of making learning fun with rainbows too. I thought I would shared twelve activities for kids. They cover a wide variety of concepts. They are all hands on and most importantly they all look like fun.

I hope you will take a few moments to explore each of them. If you find some that you really love, please take a moment to leave them a comment or to pin them to your Pinterest boards. I have already pinned all of them to my Early Learning board.

Making Learning Fun Activities

The Measured Mom Sight Word Learning Game

This game works on color words. After kids have read a color word card, they move a space a rainbow path on a game board. I really love this free printable game!

Rainbow Letter Sound Game from Mom Inspired Life

Children roll a die to find out how many colored circles featuring various alphabet letters they may walk on. They have to share the letter they landed on.

Magazine Color Search to Craft a Rainbow

This one of my making learning fun with rainbows activities. Children search through magazines for many of the colors of the rainbow. They arrange magazine cutouts in those colors on the correct arc to create a rainbow.

Rainbow Sight Word Painting from True Aim

Various colors of the rainbow watercolors can be painted over sight words written with crayon. You really need to see this activity. It looks like so much fun.

Rainbow Lacing Busy Bag from Coffee Cups and Crayons

This is an awesome fine motor busy bag activity. Children will love weaving various rainbow colors to create beautiful rainbows.

Learning 4 Kids

A rainbow salt tray like the one shared in a post by Learning 4 Kids would be great for working on letter and number writing. It would also be wonderful for just exploring fine motor skills.

Fine Motor Gold Coin Jumping a Rainbow Game

This game is a lot like Tiddly Winks. Children try to leap gold coins from circle with various colored sections into a pot of gold.

Rainbow File Folder Game

This open ended game board could be used to review sight words, math facts or science questions. Any subject could be reviewed as children travel up a rainbow path to get to the pot of gold.

Creating a Rainbow By Measuring from Gift of Curiosity

Children get to review their measurement skills as they create arcs for a rainbow. You will love the printables that she has created for kids to use for this activity.

Magnetic Letter Rainbow from Fantastic Fun and Learning

Magnetic Letters and metal tray are an invitation to making learning fun. Children are invited to complete the rainbow started with a single row of colored letters.

{Printable} Writing Sight Words on a Rainbow

This is a set free printables I created for my son to use to practice writing his sight words. Children write and rewrite their sight words across one of the rainbow’s arcs.

Rainbow Retelling Bracelet from Reading Book By Book

Each bead on this rainbow bracelet invites a child to share a different aspect of a story. What a wonderful retelling activity!

If you make any of these ideas for making learning fun, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

Reading Comprehension- This Mouse Needs a House

December 3, 2014 By Deirdre

This is a sponsored post with affiliate links.

This House Needs A Mouse by C. Jeffrey Nunnally is a perfect tale for retelling and sequencing. Before I tell you about the reading comprehension activities we did with this book let me tell you about the book.

This House Needs A Mouse shares the tale of a mouse who needed a home. He didn’t want a cage type home he had at the pet store. He wanted a real home. When the mouse finds a real home, he helps keep it free of crumbs. The people who brought him to the real home love that he cleans up after them. Eventually, though they have to move. Their family is growing and they need a bigger house. The mouse stays in the home. This is his real home.

The family that moves into the house isn’t really mouse friendly. They don’t understand all that the mouse does to help them. They try to rid the house of the mouse. Don’t worry this tale has a happy ending! It turns out this house needs a mouse.

This story was such fun for JDaniel and me to read out loud. The words of the story have rhythm and flow. There is a lot of word s on each page so, we each took turns reading a page.

We love the simple pictures and fun fonts. The fonts really helped add to each page. The pictures are funky but overwhelming. Some kids find too many colors or elaborate pictures distracting. These were just right for my guy.

How did we use this book to work on reading comprehension?

We started by creating a story map using a printable I made that features a house like the one in the book. The map displays three houses. The map displays one house for a beginning event, one for a middle of the story event and one of an event from the end of the story.

There were a number of problems in the story. I decided it would be fun to have JDaniel pick out of a few of them and write about the solutions to the problem. That meant I needed to make another This House Needs a House- Story Map. Thankfully the houses from the story map were perfect for this printable too.

I did these activities with just my son at my side. I think it would be fun to do this with a class. It would be great to see what events they chose for their story maps and what problems they found solutions for.