Part of learning to read is being able to identify the sounds in words. I recently took JDaniel’s love of soccer and a desire to work on beginning, medial and ending sounds together in a game.  I call this interactive reading game game Soccer Kick Sounds. It ended up being a fun game to take outside and play although it could be played inside with a soft soccer ball or in a gym.

Creating the Interactive Reading Game

We started by adding black pentagons to the back of a  white paper plates. It was really challenging to cut out pentagons free hand. Honestly a number of our pentagons don’t have five sides of equal length. They looked enough like pentagons that we went ahead and used them anyway. We tried to make our paper plate soccer balls  look at a soccer ball in our garage. The thought was that even odd looking pentagons should be arrange the right way. (It would have been fine to just add them anywhere I guess.)

 

 

On the back of each paper plate I placed a letter of the alphabet. I was careful in selecting letters that I could think of words with it in their beginning, middle, and ending sound.  If I could think of  words, I thought he could too. I also used the letters p, b, and d. Those letters are commonly reversed. I wanted to plant in his mind words that featured each of those letters as we played.

 

Playing Soccer Kick Sounds

With the plates ready we headed outside. We tried to spread out the plates so that it would take a kick or two to reach them.  They weren’t too spread out although they definitely could have been. (Maybe we will do that next time.)

When a plate was reached, we picked it up and try to come with the three words. One that started with that sound, one that ended with that sound and one with that sound in the middle. Both JDaniel and I took turns kicking to a soccer ball plate. I thought part of what made it an interactive reading game was that we both interacted with the game elements and with each other.

Sometimes when we try interactive reading or math activities JDaniel responds that it was an okay game. This time he asked that we play it again another day. It looks like we will be working on our soccer skills and letter sounds again this summer.

 

For more reading activities you may want to visit my Learning to Read board on Pinterest.