Lessons, Games, and Worksheets to Help Kids Read
For many parents, teaching their child to read is among the most difficult things to do to prepare them for kindergarten. Often, parents believe that once their child knows the ABCs and has reached a certain age, such as 4 or 5, they should be ready to read. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case, and pursuing active reading before the child is ready can lead to some pretty intense frustration with the parents as well as the child. There are, however, kindergarten reading lessons available that can help you to progress through the stages of reading in a way that is fast, easy, and stress-free.
Ultimately, you want your child to develop a love of reading, so using kindergarten reading lessons that advance and progress as your child gains proficiency in certain areas is just what you need to get your child ready to read and even reading a little bit before school starts. The last thing you want is for your child to have a mental roadblock in place with anything pertaining to reading, as this can make learning to read far more difficult than it needs to be.
Kindergarten reading lessons generally start with the basics, which involves learning the ABCs. This includes being able to sing the ABC song as well as to recognize the letters in both upper- and lowercase form. From that point, the lessons progress to teaching your child the sounds each letter makes. While there are structured lessons available that will help you to work with your child in a guided way, you can also encourage further reading when you are out and about. You can try to spot letters on signs while you are driving or on products as you walk through store aisles. Ask your child to spot the letters and then name the sounds those letters make.
Kindergarten reading lessons then advance from that point and will help your child learn the basic sight words. If you are not familiar with sight words, you should take time to research what they are so that you can be prepared to teach those words. Such sight words are as basic as "a," "the," and "is." Generally, most school districts around the country will want your child to know at least 25 sight words by the end of kindergarten. However, if your child masters such sight words before entering elementary school, it only serves to reinforce a firm foundation in reading that can lead to many years of happy reading and progression to more advanced books and topics.
If you have been struggling to get your child interested in reading, you may need to step back for a moment and take a look at what your child's actual skills are in terms of reading readiness. A child that is struggling with recognition of the alphabet and does not know the sounds each letter makes will have trouble learning to read. You may need to provide a learning environment that reinforces these basic skills before you move on to more advanced kindergarten reading lessons.
Make Fun Learning With Reading Games
If you want to set up your child for early success in elementary school, you will want to teach and review basic skills in reading, writing, and math. Yet as you go about teaching the ABCs and 123s, you should also try to have the goal in mind of making learning fun. You want your child to learn these skills and develop readiness for school, but you also want to nurture a life-long love of learning rather than a dread for all things related to learning. So how you go about teaching these skills is just as important as which skills you choose to teach and review at home. Kindergarten reading games are one way you can make learning fun.
Kindergarten reading games are available for you to use at all stages of reading. Learning to read is certainly the ultimate goal, and reading can and should be fun. It is a skill that you develop over time, and learning how to read starts with basics like learning the ABCs. Games are designed that start out teaching your child the upper- and lowercase letters and the sounds they make. One example of this is playing the freeze game with a pre-recorded version of the ABC song and other silly alphabet songs. You can pick up a DVD or such ABC songs at your local music store or even at consignment stores. Simply have your child dance like crazy around the room listening to these songs, and then stop as soon as the music stops. Turning the music on and off in intervals will let your child listen to these educational tunes in a fun, active way.
Other kindergarten reading games include the Slap a Card game. This game is generally played with color flash cards earlier in years, but as your child advances in skills, you can add letters (and even numbers) to the mix. You simply tell the child to slap a flash card when they see a certain letter, and your job is to flip the cards over at a rather rapid rate. This game can also be played so that the child slaps any letters in their name, too.
Once your child has mastered a few basic sight words or is at least working on sight words, you can work on other kindergarten reading games. Some games like Cut and Glue allow your child to develop other development skills while also firming up a foundation in sight words. Worksheets are available to help you with this activity, or you can create your own. Basically, you will have some letters on a worksheet, and your child will cut these letters out and match them to a picture. For instance, you may have a sheet with giant letters A, C, D, T, O, and G on one page, and a picture of a cat and a dog on another page. The child will cut out each letter, and then piece them together with glue to spell out the words "cat" and "dog" under the pictures. Kids really love this activity because it allows them to have fun with scissors and glue.
These are just a few of the many kindergarten reading games that you can put into use in your educational exercises at home that can make learning fun for your child.
Practice Core Skills with Reading Worksheets
It can be difficult to know just what skills your child needs to work on at home to prepare for kindergarten, but you certainly want to take the time encourage your child to prepare for elementary school. Starting elementary school with a firm foundation in place, including the ability to read at a basic level or otherwise be in a stage of preparedness to read, can make a huge difference in your child's experience at school. The kindergarten year is so important because the kids do learn quite a bit, but also because the year sets the tone for the years of education to come. You want your child to feel comfortable and confident during that first year, and preparing for the year at home with kindergarten reading worksheets can help you to make that happen for your child.
So what exactly can you expect from kindergarten reading worksheets? There are worksheets available that will progress with your child's development in reading. They will start with helping your child to learn all of the letters in the ABCs, in both upper and lower case. Such sight recognition of the letters is key in learning how to read. Once those letters are known and easily recognized by your child, you can progress to more advanced worksheets that work with your child on the sounds the letters make.
After your child has grown progressively skilled in sight recognition and sounds of the letters from working on kindergarten reading worksheets, your child can also work on other worksheets such as sight words and rhyming. These are basic skills that your child will grow progressively proficient in during the kindergarten year in school, but it will definitely help your child to have this foundation in place to get started.
In addition to simple reading skills, another aspect of reading is being able to write, too. Kindergarten reading worksheets are designed to help your child learn to write each of the letters in both upper- and lowercase form. Then the worksheets will progress to more advanced concepts such as practice in writing some of the sight words your child may be learning as well as his or her name. Typically, reading and writing exercises should be practiced together so that the child can advance in both areas simultaneously. Some worksheets even take your child into more advanced topics such as practice with writing a form letter and learning the parts of a letter.
If your child progresses through each of these kindergarten reading worksheets, you will find that he or she will have the basic skills in place to not just have a good foundation in kindergarten but also will actually have already learned some of the skills that your child will learn and develop during that first year in elementary school. What this means is that your child will likely be fully comfortable in the school environment and can grow in confidence during that first year in his or her ability to do the schoolwork as requested. This can set him or her up for many years of confident, happy learning, which is what most parents want for their child.