Sight Word Practice

I have never done much sight work with My Little Reader. But now that he's a kindergartner, it seems more important. And the trick to get My Little Reader engaged with what he's learning is to make it a game. So we keep our sight word practice fun, low-key, and low-pressure. He's only five, and I'm trying to remember that forcing him down the reading road before he's ready will do more harm than good long term.

Sight Word Memory is the game we started with. We're focusing on just five sight words to begin with. I made my own cards for the game out of index cards. My Little Reader decided to underline the words on the cards, because he was getting confused about which direction they were supposed to go.


Once he was doing well with Sight Word Memory, we moved on to Sight Word Dash. I took our memory cards and put one of each word in a place in the house (I just spread them on the floor or table). I took MLR down the hall and told him a word to go find; he had to dash down the hall to the room they were in and come back with the correct word card. Then I repeated those steps till he had retrieved all the sight word cards. I would either give him a time limit on a timer or just time to see how fast he could complete the task (we played both ways). He loved this game, and wanted me to have a chance to play too. He set the game up for me just as I did for him, and he read me each word I had to go find and bring back. This variation of the game was great practice for him too since he had to read each word that I was to go find.

Then we played Sight Word Dig. I happened to have a bucket of dry beans (weird, I know). If you don't have dry beans handy, you can pick some up pretty cheap at the store. Or you could use rice, sand, or something similar. We wrote each word on a small piece of paper, and buried them in the sand. Then we took turns digging for the words in bucket of beans. MLR wanted to use the timer again. When it was MLR's turn to dig I would tell him each word to dig for. When it was my turn to dig, MLR would read me each word I needed to dig for off of the sight word cards.

As we continue our sight word practice, I'll share more fun ways we're practicing our sight words!

Help Your Kids Keep Track of the Books They've Read

Giving your kids a way to record, and even just visually see, all the books they've read can help them discover their reading likes and interests. And discovering that they have likes and interests when it comes to books can help them begin to really identify themselves as readers. They might realize they have a favorite author. Who knew! Or they might discover that they seem to have a thing for historical fiction or can lead them to discover what historical fiction is (or other genres for that matter)!

I have made a bookshelf for my little guy, and he has sat in on a discussion I had with my older kids that covered the various literary genres. (I thought it would be way over his head, but he's interested, and he's getting it!) For each book they read, they get to put a paper book on their bookshelf in the appropriate color for the genre it was from.

Figuring out the genre of the books they read has been kind of fun for them. It's been like a little puzzle they get to figure out.

(I'm missing "Nonfiction" on our chart still!)

My Little Reader loves his little paper bookshelf that I hung on the wall in our bonus room. He helped me put a couple books on it that he's read. One of the books is The Mouse and The Motorcycle, which we all just finished reading aloud together (now we're reading The Secret of Platform 13).

Since his brother and sister are reading chapter books, I'm trying to keep devise a way to kind of keep things level with filling their paper bookshelves (I have competitive kids). I decided he has to read 4 books per day with me (in addition to his bedtime stories) and if he meets his reading requirement all week, then he can choose his favorite book from the week to add to his shelf. Last week he added Color Chaos.

We also have Goodreads accounts that we like to track our reading on. My boys know that I try to record most of the books we read on Goodreads, and have gotten into the habit of giving each book we read together a star rating. "Mom, give this one four stars," one will say. "No way, two stars!" the other will counter with. It has sparked some heated debates at bedtime, let me tell ya!

There are countless ways you can record and display your child's reading progress. You could make a goal chart and color it in little by little as they inch toward their reading goal for the month or the year. You could make a paper chain, and they could add a new link for each book they read. Pinterest can help you with more ideas than you ever wanted probably!

Keep the reading excitement up and celebrate those milestones as they hit them!

Do you keep track of the books your child reads? How do you do it?

Learning Art Through Literature

I love reading books with My Little Bookworm and seeing his interests and curiosity sparked. He gets interested in everything he reads about! That's how we have been doing a lot of his homeschooling these past few weeks - we read lots of books!

This past week we read Color Chaos. It was one of his choices from the library, and he loved learning about the primary and secondary colors as we read through the story. Even after the story was done, he was walking around the house categorizing everything he saw according to its color.

I decided to capitalize on his interest and put him to work doing some color wheel projects.

We did this fun science experiment using water, food coloring, and cups. It didn't work for us, but I guess that's what makes science so interesting - it's unpredictable sometimes. We talked a lot about what was supposed to happen, and reasons why it maybe didn't work. He loved it all the same.

Then I thought he would love making a color wheel. But when I suggested the idea he balked. "I don't like coloring or painting," he declared (his interests seem to change daily lately). He said, " I only like doing things with toys." So I made that work, and had him create a color wheel with his favorite toys!

Again, he loved it, and was very engaged with the work. Even after he finished the wheel, he made several "robots" and pointed out to us all that he had used all the primary and secondary colors to create them - straight off his wheel!

There are so many fun books about art. Here are a few I really like. Read them with your little guys and see where their interest and imagination takes them! Real and lasting learning only seems to happen for my kids when they care - and they usually care about what they read about in books!

 

Turn Your Car Into A Literacy Learning Lab!

How many hours a week do you spend riding around in your car with your kids? Far more than you would like I'm guessing.

What if you could put that wasted time to good use for your kiddos? I like to fill up my car with great books, toys, and various educational-type items that will engage my kids' minds a bit and help keep them all from driving me nuts. If you have a DVD player in your car, there are even some videos that can be awesome for entertaining and teaching while in the car! Really!

Watch the video and I'll share my ideas with you!




Do you keep things like this in your car for your kids. Share your ideas in the comments!

DIY Writing Center

Today is the first of many more Literacy Launchpad videos to come. I will soon be fully launching the Literacy Launchpad Youtube Channel. My Video Producer husband is holding my hand through learning how to put these videos together mostly/partially myself.  I'm so excited to have the opportunity to make what I do each week at Literacy Launchpad accessible to so many more people! Let me know how I'm doing, share this week's video, and be sure to subscribe to Literacy Launchpad on Youtube so you don't miss any coming videos!




Reading and writing go hand in hand. So don't forget to create writing opportunities for your kids and students just like you create abundant reading opportunities for them!

Supplies for your writing center can be found at dollar stores, office supply stores, craft stores, thrift stores (one of our favorite places), and even yard sales! It doesn't have to cost a ton of money, and actually, it's better if it doesn't because then you won't feel frustrated if something from your writing center gets lost or broken (happens frequently at our house).

Writing centers can be stationary, and remain at one table or desk where your students can come and go. Or you could have a portable writing center, contained in a box or basket, and it could move from place to place around your home or classroom. You could even bring the writing center in the car!

Some ideas of items to include in your writing center:
- envelopes
- writing pads
- clip boards (this is especially handy if your writing center is portable center that moves from spot to spot)
-pencil sharpeners
- pencils
- erasers
- cards
- highlighters
- fun stationary
- printed materials grocery store ads, books, magazines, letters you have received in the mail... anything that could be used for inspiration
- dry erase writing cards, or boards
- chalkboards
- tape
- stapler
- calendar/planner
- paper clips
- folders
- notebooks
- sticky pads
- old phones or computer keyboards for playing office
- fun pens
- pencil holders and cubbies for organizing
- stickers
- rubber stamps

A few ideas for themes in your writing center:
- Teacher/Classroom (chalkboard, lesson planning books, workbooks... )
- Office (old phone, calendar, computer keyboard, general office supplies... )
- Grocery List-Making (grocery ads, coupons, notepads, calculators...)
- Hotel Manager (I loved to play this as a kid. We would use an old phone and a journal calendar and pretend to book reservations for guests.)
- Restaurant (small pads of papers, menus, toy cash register... )
- Author/Illustrator's workshop (blank books, writing tools, art tools, photos of favorite authors and illustrators working...)


Books mentioned in the video that could be used as writing prompts:

       

Do what works for you and your family or your classroom. Get as fancy or as simple as you want. And perhaps let your kids' interests guide the direction you take with your writing center.

Do you have a writing center in your home or classroom? What kinds of things do you keep in it for your kids to use?

Writing Fun as Christmas Gifts

If you don't have any ideas for some fun, literacy-inspired Christmas gifts yet, it's not my fault. Ha! I know I've been loading you up with gift posts this month. Sorry, I guess I was just inspired.

Today I'm sharing a little fun gift I made for four of my nieces. They all enjoy writing, and "doing work", and sending and receiving mail. So I ordered some cute little mailboxes from Joanne's and then loaded them up with some neat office and writing supplies. I would have loved something like this as a kid!

I painted the girls' names in the side of their mailboxes, and bundled up all the various supplies. My kids have been watching me put these together and now asking for little mailboxes and stationary for themselves.

Photo by Polka Dot Chair

I think something like this one pictured above would be perfect outside my kids' bedrooms. I love the idea of stuffing all their junk in it that they leave around the house too! Hee. Check out more info on this idea HERE.

I hope my nieces have as much fun using their mailboxes and supplies as I had in putting them all together. Maybe I'll get some mail from them too! Ooo, I should have included some self addressed envelopes! Might have to go throw a few of those in!

End of Summer Literacy Fun

My first summer with three kids was... interesting. I had lofty plans for activities and learning, but most of them didn't happen. We did have fun celebrating summer today though with some reading and a little field trip.

We got a couple books from the library about ice cream, and read a little on the subject before we headed out to visit our local dairy plant.

I must admit, we were a bit disappointed in our visit to the dairy plant. There was no actual tour. Their idea of a "tour" was to let us watch a video on how they make their various dairy products. Kind of lame.

But we took a picture with a (fake) cow!

And we got free ice cream! So it wasn't a total bust. Turns out they don't even make ice cream at the plant we visit. They make it in Chattanooga.

Anyhow, we decided to go up to the store and buy some rock salt so we could make ice cream ourselves. We found directions online for making ice cream without an ice cream maker (because we don't have one), using just ziploc baggies, rock salt, and then stuff pretty much everybody has around the kitchen (ice cubes, milk, sugar, and vanilla). I was pretty skeptical as to whether this was actually going to work or not, but it did! I ended up doing all the shaking, because the bags were too heavy for the three year old and my two big kids were busy teaching themselves the Cha-Cha Slide (don't ask). It only took five minutes though! And it was really yummy! Downside: It didn't make very much, and it melted REALLY fast.

Here's Isaac giving a "thumbs up" (we'll have to work on that) for his ice cream.

Other books about ice cream:

The Ice Cream King by Steve Metzger and Julie Downing

I Am An Ice Cream Truck by Ace Landers

Milk to Ice Cream by Inez Snyder

Wemberly's Ice Cream Star by Kevin Henkes

I Like Ice Cream by Robin Pickering

Should I Share My Ice Cream by Mo Willems

From Cow to Ice Cream by Bertram T. Knight

Ice Cream by Elisha Cooper

Yummy Ice Cream: A Book About Sharing by Emma Quay and Anna