Reading+Hints

The activities suggested here and others like them will help your child think about words and the sounds that letters make.

Pick a "Letter of the day" and hunt for it in storybooks, magazines, license plates or signs. Play word games. take turns making up silly sentences using rhyming words. Teach your child tongue twisters. Ask your child to help find items in the grocery store. Give store coupons to your cild. Ask him/her to help you find the objects by matching pictures and words. Read together. Choose books with simple sentences, rhyming words, or repeated phrases. Reread favorite stories asking your child to fill in his favorite parts. Learn nursery rhymes and jump-rope rhymes. Children who can rhyme are more successful at learning to read. Take a walk around your neighborhood and look for favorite things that rhyme with cat, mouse, duck, dog. How many things can you find? With your child, look at packages of favorite foods to find capital and small letters. How many matches can you find? Have your child draw pictures of things whose names begin with a particular letter. Hang the pictures on your refrigerator. Make up our own riddle rhymes. For extra fun, turn them into birthday cards for relatives or friends. Ask your child to "teach" you the ABC Song. Have fun singing it together! Look through the local newspaper or a magazine to find items whose names begin the the sound for a particular letter. Help your child make up a story about a BIG pig. Use as many words ending in -ig as possible. As you set the dinner table with your child, look for things you might use whose names begin the the sound for s. Have your child do one of these just for fun: Draw a cat with a hat. Draw a cat with a bat. Draw a cat with a hat and a bat. Say a word, (fish), and have our child say a rhyming word, (dish), continue taking turns, and play until you run out of words. Have your child draw a picture and write abut something he/she can do that begins with the soound for the letter r. (race, run, read) Make up a story using words that end in -at,-ing, -ed, or -ot