Sight word books set 17: Presidents Day

Presidents Day is coming up in February. It’s a national American holiday on which we celebrate the birthdays of two of our greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

In honor of this day, my set of Presidents Day emergent readers teaches about these two leaders in a way young children can understand.  Also included are a book about the job of the President and one about the White House.

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This set of readers introduces the sight word “is.”  Since I’m teaching my Three and Five to read with This Reading Mama’s Reading the Alphabet curriculum, I used activities from Lesson  17 as part of our learning.

My Three enjoys the sight word readers that come with each lesson of Reading the Alphabet. They are much simpler than the ones I create, so he picks them up easily.  Our new word, is, was an easy one.

After reading the little book, we worked together to construct all the sentences on our pocket chart (using printables from the curriculum). He was so proud to read the sentences afterward using a pointer.

Exciting news!  My Three is starting to show an ability to sound out words.  Up until now we’ve focused solely on letter sounds, sight words, and basic concepts of print (such as voice to print matching).  But my Three has developed an interest in the word “pop.”  He spells it all the time, writes it, and pointed it out on the Corn Pops box in the cereal aisle the other day.

I decided to work with that word family as an introduction to sounding out words.  He’s still shaky, but this genius activity from Filth Wizardry worked like magic!  You’ll definitely want to check out her post about repurposing Duplo bricks for many more ideas!

My Five doesn’t need more practice with short vowel word families, so I’m starting him on long vowel patterns.  He did a number of my newly created long vowel read ‘n stick mats for practice.  (They’re coming next week! Watch for them!)

And that brings us to our newest set of emergent readers…

It was pretty tricky to figure out the text for these books using limited vocabulary.  I didn’t want to get too detailed about the history because I knew that preschoolers probably wouldn’t have the background knowledge to figure out the tougher words.  But it was impossible to keep the books too simple.

My Five (not yet in kindergarten) had very little trouble with these, even though they do present more of a challenge. His reading is starting to move forward in big leaps.  It’s so much fun when that happens!  If your child is at a more basic level, here are some prompts for the harder words:

1) Can you find a chunk you know at the beginning?

I used this one for the word monument.  He could figure out mon, and I helped him add the remaining chunks to the word.

2)  Can the picture help you?

If your child gets stuck on the word “dollar” (see above image), you could say, “What do you see in the picture that starts with /d/?”

3)  What would make sense?

Use this prompt when your child is completely stuck — or makes a wild guess that doesn’t fit the context.

4) Can you sound it out?

I put this one last for a reason!  Children using beginning readers generally have a limited ability to sound out words.  Don’t frustrate your new reader by asking him to do something beyond his ability.  If you know he can sound out a word, encourage him to do so.  But it should not be the first thing you ask him to try.

In the set you will receive:

• George Washington
• Abraham Lincoln
• The President
• The White House Is Big! 

How to assemble:

• Print pages 2-9 front to back (page 1 is my Terms of Use).  Print in color or grayscale.  
• Cut across the horizontal center of each page.
• Insert one set of pages into the other, paying attention to the page numbers.
• Staple with a  long-armed stapler.

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