If you have a budding reader in your family, you’ll want to do all you can to encourage him or her to love reading!
But if you use materials that are too advanced or complex, your child might get discouraged or lose interest.
To help kids build a sense of accomplishment and excitement about reading, try these five simple activities for early readers!
Not only are these ideas easy for children to follow, they’re simple for you to put together. 🙂
Table of Contents
Flashcards
Flashcards are one of the easiest ways to help young kids build literacy skills.
Rather you’re focusing on phonics or sight reading, you can use flashcards to teach kids and then help them practice what they’ve learned.
Flashcards also have the added benefit of being simple card game materials.
You can use two sets to make a matching game or a memory game in just a few minutes! Try these free contractions flashcards to introduce young ones to basic English contractions.
Worksheets
Easy find-a-letter and word search worksheets are perfect for literacy practice!
If you have a preschooler who’s working on letter recognition, you can give him or her a highlighter and ask him to find each occurrence of a specific letter.
Do-A-Dot learning worksheets are great for toddlers and preschoolers who are working on fine motor skills and prewriting.
Sight Word Practice
All children need to learn sight words, since these are words that do not follow the general phonetic rules.
While you can use worksheets and flashcards for sight word practice, it can also be good to help kids learn them in a non-conventional way.
YouTube videos featuring sight word songs and games can be a fun way to practice.
Kids might also enjoy incorporating some movement into their sight word practice, such as in the outdoor game “Sight Word Stomp“.
These Simple Activities for Early Readers give them a jump start on more advanced skills.
Audiobooks
Audiobooks are a wonderful way to help young or reluctant readers enjoy reading!
If your child is hesitant to sound out words on his or her own, following along with an audiobook can take the mystery out of decoding words.
Even if your child learns to memorize words from listening to an audiobook, you can use their knowledge to help them recognize phonetic pairs, which can build confidence for reading on their own.
Grade-Level Readers
Age or grade-level readers are a wonderful way to boost reading skills for kids!
When children learn to read an entire book by themselves, they feel good about reading and about learning in general.
Be sure to choose books that match your child’s current skill level and a few that pose a little challenge.
Start looking now for books to encourage your children to read this summer.
How do you encourage your kids to read? Have you tried any tips to help early readers succeed? Share your tips with us!
