Education resources for parents and teachers
Last week, in our reading comprehension series, This Reading Mama wrote about teaching children to use their schema to understand what they read. Everyone brings a different schema to the books they read, because schema is your background knowledge. It's shaped by your experiences, the people you know, and the books you've read. Today we're tackling another reading comprehension strategy: making ... Read More
Need something that will give your child practice sounding out words with short vowels? Some of you have asked about our final set of word slider cards. They're finally ready to share! The concept of word slider cards is super simple. Just write single syllable word on a long strip of paper. Leave spaces between each chunk of the word. Then cut off the end of a sealed envelope and pull the strip out, letter by ... Read More
Today I'm sharing a big set of fun and free handwriting worksheets! So what do your kids do when it's time to practice their handwriting? I'm guessing they don't jump up and cheer. Sitting down with a number 2 pencil and copying rows of letters and words... yeah, I wouldn't be too crazy about it either. But not to worry - I've created a pack of fun handwriting pages. Do your kids love fun facts? My kindergartner ... Read More
Join me for a look at reading comprehension strategies that will help your child grow as a reader. This Reading Mama and I teamed up to bring you another collaborative series! Together, we shared nine reading comprehension strategies to help your child learn and grow as a reader. In this series you'll find sample lessons, book lists, and other tools to bring these strategies to ... Read More
How to assemble Print the pages front to back, starting on page 2. (Page 1 is my Terms of Use - be sure not to print it or they will all be messed up!) I like to print on light or medium cardstock. Each book will be two full sheets of paper, front to back. Cut on the horizontal center of each book. (I love our paper cutter! I've used it for years. A little pricey on Amazon, but you might be able to get it at ... Read More
It's another set of free phonics books! (This post contains affiliate links.) Can you believe we're on set 22 of our free phonics books collection? Now that we've been working on two-syllable words for a while, today's set features two-syllable words with these endings: -y (as in candy), -ie (as in cookie), and -ey (as in monkey). Let's take a look! Each book starts with the new phonics pattern. On the right, ... Read More
It can be hard for pre-readers to hear the difference between single consonants and blends. Try this free Bingo game to help your early reader master blends and digraphs! My Four knows his beginning sounds without any trouble, but hearing the two distinct sounds in a blend is difficult for him. When he worked on our beginning blends clip cards, I could see that we needed to take things back a step. And that brings ... Read More
We're almost at the end of our collection of free phonics books. Here's set 21! (This post contains affiliate links.) For the last few sets, we've been working on two-syllable words. For this set, I chose two-syllable words with these word endings: le, el, ar, er, and or. Here's a sample book! You'll notice that I put the word ending in a different color. Your child should be able to read the first chunk using ... Read More
Yay - more phonics books! This is a set of four books featuring VCV words. (This post contains affiliate links.) So... are you wondering what a VCV word is? Don't worry - it's not complicated. VCV simply means vowel-consonant-vowel. It's a pattern we find in many two-syllable words. VCV words can be either open or closed. Let's look at a few examples. Here's an open syllable VCV word. The first syllable is ... Read More
Is your child ready to read two-syllable words? Help him learn to read VCCV words with this set of printable books. So. What are VCCV words, anyway? It's very simple. A VCCV word is a two-syllable words with the pattern vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel in the middle of the word. The word breaks into two syllables after the first consonant. Here are just a few of the VCCV words that you'll find in the readers: ... Read More
