Have you seen my growing collection of hands-on printables to help your beginning reader master the short vowel word families? Today I’m sharing my next set of Read ‘n Stick mats — 6 free short o activities.
(This post contains affiliate links.)
I’ve created these learning mats to help my preschooler learn to sound out simple words. He loves our collection and is always ready to read a few!
How to assemble and use Read ‘n Stick Mats:
1) Print and laminate each mat on sturdy cardstock. I love this affordable home laminator and laminating sheets! Then print and laminate each set of cards. Cut them apart and stick velcro dots to the pictures and backs of the cards.
2) You can certainly print the mats and cards on plain paper, and have your child match them. However, for a more durable and lasting activity, I recommend #1. A bonus of the velcro dots is that you can store the mats without the cards getting lost — just stick them on!
3) My mats were constantly getting misplaced until I punched holes in them and stored them in a 3-ring binder.
4) Take off all the cards. Have your child read the name of the family in the center of the board. Then have him read each card and match it to the picture. You will be teaching new vocabulary along the way when he gets stuck on a particular word (“What’s a cog?”).
5) After a few times of doing this with you, this is something your child might be able to do himself.
Short o activities
Get all of my original Read ‘n Stick Mats
Get your free word family mats!
Decodable Passages: CVC Words
$5.00
You’ll love this big collection of passages for beginning readers!
Free Reading Printables for Pre-K-3rd Grade
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Coco
Hi Anna, I just found your site and the activity mats are really nice. I also appreciate how you gave all the background info. of printing, laminating, 3 hole punching for a binder…etc.
I have one comment that I hope you take with the kindness that is meant. If your clip art pictures showed children of different races and ethnicities, I would have downloaded all of them. So perhaps in the future, you could think about representing all children. This is said with the love and intent I have for all children.
Thanks
Coco
Anna G
I completely understand, Coco! That’s why after I had been blogging for a while and could afford it, I purchased more diverse clip art (the free sets were created with free clip art). I think you’ll find a wide variety of skin colors in my paid set: https://www.themeasuredmom.com/product/short-vowel-word-family-mats/
Alesia @ FUNtastic SIMON
Great activity! I love it. Thank you for sharing. It is a great post to point to, I added it to the short o activities on my blog section.
Alesia
Anna Geiger
Thanks so much for sharing it, Alesia!
Kelli at 3 Boys and a Dog
Anna, I absolutely love these! Thanks bunches for sharing it on the Mommy Club last week! As one of my favorite links last week, you have been featured this week. Woot! http://3boysandadog.com/2013/11/the-mommy-club-share-your-resources-and-solutions-123/
Anna Geiger
Thank you so much for the feature, Kelli! I really appreciate it.
Heidi Butkus
These are wonderful, as usual! Thank you for trying so hard to include lots of “ox” family pictures, too! Those are always hard to find! I was thinking that another good one to add in there would be an X-Box!!! 🙂
Heidi Butkus
Anna Geiger
X-box did not cross my mind, but I can imagine many kids would identify with that one! 🙂 Thanks for commenting, Heidi!
Amanda
Thank you Anna! Now that we have our printer we can finally start printing off some of your fabulous resources. My daughter always finds it more exciting when our lesson materials come through the printer – something magical about it to her. haha!
Anna Geiger
Funny! 🙂 I hope you can use lots of what you find, Amanda! See you for playgroup 🙂