Thanksgiving Emergent Readers (sight word “for”)

Looking for easy readers to use in your classroom or home before the Thanksgiving holiday?  Today I’m sharing set 11 of my sight word readers designed to be used alone or alongside This Reading Mama’s Reading the Alphabet curriculum.  We added the sight word “for” in this set of free Thanksgiving emergent readers.

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I’m loving that things are starting to click with my 3 1/2 year old.  Sight words come more easily to him now, and he’s getting a better grasp on beginning sounds. We haven’t started trying to sound out words yet – and I probably won’t try until he’s about four.

My other kids (including my daughter who was reading at about a third grade level at the beginning of kindergarten) were not developmentally ready to “sound it out” until they were four years old.

Here’s a popular activity we did to review sight words.  I gave each of my boys the pieces for the turkey, along with sight words they are working on. They glued down the turkey and read the sight word feathers as they attached them.  You might notice that I did not use Reading the Alphabet sight words for my Five.  We focused on color words instead.

My Three was so proud of himself when he read all his turkey’s feathers to Daddy!

My Three just loves these sight word mazes from Reading the Alphabet!  Currently we are on lesson 12, which focuses on the sound of letter L and adds the new sight word for.  Rather than complete the page as a maze, he likes to cross out the odd words and color the word he’s searching for.

The first day I gave him the new emergent reader, he wouldn’t try it.  I did not push – and strongly recommend not pushing three-year-olds to do reading activities they’re not in the mood for!  However, the next day he was excited to try the book himself.

This cut-and-paste activity is included with each Reading the Alphabet lesson.  We always pick and choose which activities to do — and this time my Three had fun doing this page all by himself.  I was so happy to see him (finally!) wanting to cut and glue without my help.  I helped him name the pictures so he could say the words aloud as he rhymed them with “light.”

My Five (not in kindergarten yet) is considerably farther along than his brother in reading.  Sounding out short vowel words has become more automatic for him. He can read very basic books like Ten Apples Up on Top.  So I choose the more challenging parts of Reading the Alphabet when teaching my Five.  Here he clips the number of syllables for each word.

My Five loves to draw, so he enjoys these pages (one per lesson) which teach print awareness.  Again, we don’t always do them.

Thanksgiving emergent readers

Since the Reading the Alphabet emergent readers have become far too easy for my Five, I create more challenging ones for him.  We focus on the same sight word, but there are also other words to solve using context, basic phonics skills, and grammar knowledge.  I’ll show you what I mean.

What skills and strategies did my Five use while reading these pages?

• He read familiar sight words (you, can, see, the, for).
• He used basic phonics knowledge to figure out new words (hot, soft).
• He used picture cues for some of the words (green beans, mashed potatoes).
• He learned something new about spelling when he asked about the word mashed.  “Why does it end with a d?  It should be a t!”  You have to love these little learning moments that you don’t plan for.

(Note:  I have recently updated the books.  They the text is slightly simpler than what you see in the images here.  The clip art is the same.)

Here’s another one.

• My Five read familiar sight words (look, at, my, I, can, it, for, the).
• He figured out more challenging words using the context and picture (picture, color, Thanksgiving).
• He learned new phonics skills.  (We focused on the silent e in the word bake.)

By checking out my other free emergent reader sets, you’ll see that they gradually increase with complexity so that they grow with your child.   This set was the most challenging for my Five.  He needed to read them a few times before he was comfortable.  Not a bad thing ;).

Most of my emergent reader books are secular so that they are accessible to everyone – particularly public school teachers.  However, when appropriate I create a reader with a Christian theme (because I use them with my own children, of course!)  You’ll find that in the reader Thank You, God!

In the download you will receive:

• The Pilgrims and the Native Americans
• Thanksgiving Dinner
• Happy Thanksgiving!
• Thank You, God! 

How to assemble:

(for a video tutorial, see this page)

• 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.

 Check out the rest of our collection! 

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Is this set advancing too quickly for your reader? Try our simpler one!

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