First reading words for preschoolers


Preschool Sight Words - The Measured Mom

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How should I introduce sight words to preschoolers?

What is a good sight word list for preschoolers?

Where can I find preschool sight word worksheets?

These are all questions I’ve heard from parents who are eager to get their children on the right path when it comes to learning to read.

They are all good questions, but I think we need to back up and ask this question first:

SHOULD we teach sight words in preschool?

First of all, let’s clarify what sight words are. Some people will tell you that sight words are words that cannot be sounded out.

But researchers’ definition of sight words is different. Sight words are words that a reader recognizes instantly, without needing to sound out or guess.

Therefore, all beginning readers have a different sight word vocabulary, because they all know a different set of words “by sight.

It’s probably best to speak in terms of “high frequency words.” These are the most commonly used words in printed text.

Obviously, readers need to know high frequency words.

But HOW they learn these high frequency words matters.

We’ll get to that in a minute.

First …

What should preschoolers know BEFORE they learn to read?

This is an important question to answer.

After all, we don’t teach newborn babies to read. Why not?

They’re not ready (obviously).

They’re not ready because they need a set of important pre-reading skills.

5 important pre-reading skills for preschoolers

1- Concepts of print

  • They hold books correctly and turn pages in the right direction.
  • They know that each word on a page represents a spoken word.
  • They understand that text is read from left to right.

2- Language and listening skills

  • They can retell a familiar story in their own words.
  • They engage with a story as you read to them — asking questions (“Why did he say that?”) and making personal connections (“I wish  I could have that much ice cream!”)
  • They can answer simple questions about a story.

3- Letter knowledge

  • They recognize the letters of the alphabet.
  • They can name each letter’s sound (or a large number of them).

4-Phonological and phonemic awareness

  • They can count words.
  • They can count syllables in words.
  • They can rhyme.
  • They can put sounds together to make a word.  If you say these sounds to your child, /f/ and /ish/, can he put them together to make fish?  If you stretch a word and say it like this — mooooon – does your child know the word is moon?
  •  They can identify the first and last sound in a word. This is not the same thing as knowing the letter.  For example, if you ask your child the first sound in the word phone, she should be able to answer /f/.

5- They have an interest in learning to read.

  • They enjoy being read to.
  • They frequently ask you to read aloud.
  • They pretend to read.

After pre-reading skills are in place, we should teach preschoolers to sound out words.

Once students are ready to read, we teach them to blend sounds into words.

I used to teach that students should learn sight words FIRST, because it can seem easier to memorize a few words than to sound them out.

Because I believed this, I created a huge set of sight word books for preschoolers to “learn to read.” I thought that they could memorize the repeated “sight word” and use the pictures to read the rest of the words.

I don’t share those sight word books anymore, because I’ve learned that three-cueing (something I learned to use in college and grad school) is a major problem and NOT something we should be teaching beginning readers to use. (I won’t get into that here, but you might want to check out my podcast episode: “What’s wrong with 3-cueing?”)

What if preschoolers struggle to sound out words?

If your child struggles to sound out simple words, you might think that you should switch to giving them them lists of words to memorize.

That is NOT the answer.

Instead, you need to go back to those pre-reading skills and make sure they’ll all in place … particularly phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to play with individual sounds in words.

Readers should be able to isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate phonemes.

While we certainly can (and SHOULD) continue to teach phonemic awareness as we teach phonics, if children don’t have the basics, they will not be successful with reading.

Practice ORAL blending if your child struggles to sound out a 3-letter word like hat.

You can say, “Put these sounds together to make a word. /h/ /a/ /m/. What’s the word?” If your child cannot say HAM, then you need to build phonemic awareness before sounding out words.

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AFTER preschoolers are starting to sound out words, we can teach “sight words.”

When your child understands the concept of decoding words and is ready to read a simple decodable book, you’ll need to teach the high frequency words that are also included in that book.

For example, if your child is learning to sound out CVC words, the book’s text may look like this:

“The cat is big.”

To read the sentence, your child needs to know the high frequency words THE and IS.

THE is not a word your child can sound out; you will need to teach him/her to memorize the tricky parts. IS is not as tricky as you might think; just teach your child that the letter S has two sounds: /s/ and /z/, and in the word IS it makes the sound /z/.

What sight words should we teach preschoolers?

In general, I don’t think you should teach preschoolers to memorize words. However, it’s helpful to know a small set of words “by sight” so that your child can start to read decodable books.

Readsters recommends teaching these sight words to pre-readers:

  • the
  • a
  • I
  • to
  • and
  • was
  • for
  • you
  • is
  • of

HOW should we teach introduce sight words in preschool?

While flash cards can be helpful for review, that’s not how we should introduce sight words. I’ve got a whole post about how to teach sight words, and I recommend checking it out here.

Here’s a quick summary of my approach:

  • Assuming your learner has phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge, you’re ready to begin. (Not sure about the phonemic awareness? Give this free assessment.)
  • Name the new word, and have your learner repeat it.
  • Name the individual phonemes (sounds) in the word. For example, in the word is, there are two phonemes: /i/ and /z/.
  • Spell the sounds. Call attention to any unexpected spelling. In is, we spell /i/ with i and /z/ with s.
  • If possible, have your learner read related words. Has and his are great words to read alongside is because they are short vowel words with an s that represents the the /z/ sound.
  • Have your learner read connected text. Connected text can be decodable sentences or books.

I recommend my high frequency word lessons and books which can be used with kids as young as preschool.

You’re invited to check out the rest of this series!

 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

 

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8 Easy Ways to Teach Sight Words to Preschoolers

Learning sight words is a critical skill for kids to learn how to read!

 

Teaching children how to learn sight words can be a challenge.

 

Why?

 

Because it all comes down to memorization. There is not a way to sound out these words. In case you are unfamiliar, sight words are words like that don’t follow the traditional rules of spelling or can’t be sounded out phonetically. Some examples of sight words are who, does, and come.

 

To give your preschooler a great jump start to reading, I have come up with 8 EASY ways that you can teach your preschooler sight words!

 


#1. Start With TWO Letter Sight Words

 

Does anyone have a toddler that says no to absolutely everything?

 

You’ll be hearing it all over again when you start teaching sight words because the word “no” is one of the easiest ones to recognize!

 

When you start out teaching a child sight words, it’s important to start small and build up to longer words. Starting with TWO letter words for them to memorize is going to be a lot easier than FOUR letter words.

 

Here are some two-letter sight words that you can start with: of, to, is, in, it, he, on, as, at, be, or, by, we, an, do, if, up, so, no, go

 

Once your little one has mastered the two-letter words, you can move onto three or more letter words!

 

While some of the words on this list can be sounded out and others can not, I think it’s easier to have your child just memorize the words so they can say it at a glance.

 

Here is a  list of sight words for each age/grade level?

 

I use the above sight word checklist when I am deciding what new words to teach my daughter!

 


#2. Choose Sight Words In Your Child’s Favorite Books

 

I have a quiz for you.

 

How many sight words can you find in this sentence below from the book, Where the Wild Things Are?

 

“His mother called him “WILD THING!” and Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

 

I found 12 sight words in that one sentence!
  • (his, him, wild, and, said, eat, you, up, so, he, was, to)

 

Sight words are referred to as high-frequency words because some of them are the most common words in the English language! 

 

When you are reading to a child, and they are starting to learn sight words, make sure to point out the words in their favorite books. They will be more interested in learning the sight words if it’s in a context they enjoy! We have a subscription to Highlights Magazine, and my daughter loves pointing out which words she recognizes.

 

Your kids will feel so proud when they can read a few words in their favorite stories. It will encourage them to want to learn more!

 


#3. Practice Daily

Just like teaching your kids the alphabet, numbers, and shapes, it takes repetition for them to understand the material!

 

At least a few minutes of work on sight words each day will help them immensely when it comes to memorizing sight words.

Here is what works best for my daughter:

 

I write the sight words that we have previously learned on a small dry erase board, which I limit to about 25 max.

 

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We take some time and review those words plus add one or two new words depending on how well she does during the review.

 

Check out this short video of how I review the sight words with my daughter!

 

 

To ensure that she remembers the sight words we learned, I make sure to include ones that we learned in the past.

 


Tip#4: Make Reading Fun!

 

If I just focused on the above activity over and over again, I think I would struggle badly getting my kids to learn how to read.

 

It’s essential to come up with EXCITING ways to teach your kids how to read!

 

Here are FOUR ways to make learning sight words engaging!

 

Activity #1. Shaving Cream Sight Words

 

Shaving cream is such an amazing sensory activity! Your kids will be so excited to use shaving cream for a learning activity, it won’t even feel like they are learning!

 

I use men’s foaming shaving cream because I think it works the best! But other types can be used as well.

 

 

How to do this activity:

 

1. Spray foam shaving cream on an art tray.

 

2. Spread it out so the shaving cream is all over the tray!

 

3. Write a sight word that you are working on in the shaving cream and ask your child if they know what it is.

 

4. Repeat this process over and over again! Let your child erase the words so they get a chance to play in the shaving cream!

 


Activity #2. Do-A-Dot Painting Activity

 

Do-A-Dot painters are one of my MUST-HAVE supplies to have on hand at your house.

 

They are so much fun to play with and they are pretty much MESS FREE! Can’t beat that right?

 

 

Do-A-Dot markers can be used for so many fun and learning activities. This specific activity was great because it worked recognizing a specific sight word while getting to paint!

 

GRAB YOUR FREE Pre-K Sight Word Do-A-Dot WORKSHEETS HERE!

(Each grade level coming soon!)

 

 

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Want to check out my other MUST-HAVE Supplies? Take a look at my list HERE!

 


Activity#3. Play Sight Word Games

 

My new thing is trying to turn games into a learning activity!

 

My kids love to play board games, so why not add a little bit of learning into the mix while getting to play?

 

 

How to do this activity:

 

1. Materials you need- Don’t Break the Ice Game, dot stickers, and a marker.

 

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2. On white dot stickers, write some sight words that you are working on with your little one. I wrote one that my daughter already knew so she could play the game and be successful!

 

3. Explain to your kids that they have to tap lightly on the ice with the hammer instead of trying to hit it as hard as they can because a lot falls at once that way. Tell them they can play the regular way after you practice the sight words. 🙂

 

4. Ask them to find a specific word and tap on it with the hammer or they can tap on a word of their choice and tell you what it says!

 

5. After they say or find all the words, then you can play the normal way!

 


Activity #4. FUN Worksheets

 

My daughter loves to color, so I created this Popsicle themed Color by Sight Word Worksheet for her to do.

 

 

Here are some excellent workbooks available on Amazon that have activities ready to go!

  • 100 Write and Learn Sight Word Practice Pages
  • Wipe Clean: Learning Sight Words
  • The Best Sight Word Book Ever!

 

Don’t want to buy an entire workbook? I am constantly working on new FREE resources to make available for you.

 

Click here to grab your FREE Popsicle Color by Sight Word WORKSHEET!

 

Also, take a look at the other FREE RESOURCES that I have while you are there!

 


#5. Build Sentences with Sight Words

 

Building sentences using sight words is a GREAT way to show your child how the specific word is used in real life.

 

You can do this by verbally saying sentences or you can also do it in an interactive way.

 

 

We have a bunch of Thomas the Train, train tracks at home, so I thought it would be fun to work on sentence building with sight words with them!

 

How to do this activity:

 

1. Materials you need- Thomas the Train tracks, labels, and a marker.

 

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2. On labels, write some sight words that make sense in a sentence that you kids know or you want them to learn!

 

3. Spread them all apart so they have to work on building the sentence so it makes sense. They will have to read each word then create the sentence!

 


#6. Add A New Word Each Day

 

Once your child can recognize words, you can start introducing at least one new sight word each day. In the beginning, you want to start slow.

 

Since sight words are based on memorization, that’s why learning one word a day is perfect for this age level.

 

While you should introduce one new word a day, remember to review past sight words that you practiced with them before. It’s crucial to go over these sight words so they won’t forget them.

 

Remember they are still preschoolers, repetition is key! 

 


#7.

Stay Positive!

 

You never want to rush the learning process.

 

Forcing preschoolers to sit and complete work when they are not ready may cause the child to think negatively about learning.

 

You want your child to be EXCITED to learn.

 

Don’t get frustrated if they don’t catch on right away or if it takes them a few days to master a word. It will happen with time, and they will feel successful if you encourage them!

 

There are times that my daughter can just not grasp on to a word.

 

For example, she had trouble memorizing the word “find.” I asked her every day for TWO weeks about this word, and she still wasn’t getting it. I decided I was going to take a break and come back to it later. I introduced the word to her again after about a month, and now she has no problem with it!

 

As parents, we have to be patient with our children while they are learning.

 

We are supposed to be their biggest cheerleaders! Tell your child how proud you are when they learn a new word. They will feel your excitement and, in return, be more excited to keep on learning new material!

 


#8. Join An Online Learning Program

 

One great website that works on early reading skills is Kickstart Reading.

 

Kickstart ReadingThis is such a fantastic reading program! I also have a promo code that you can use to get some money off of your subscription! You will receive a FOREVER plan for $39.00(normally $57.00). This is a program that focuses solely on reading, which I think is better than anything else out there. Your little ones will learn about phonetics, sight words, vowel sounds, digraphs and MORE!

 

PROMO CODE: ABCDEE

 

Here is a short demonstration of just one of the segments included on Kickstart Reading. This is my 5-year-old daughter working on word blends.

 

 


Final Thoughts and Conclusion

 

Deciding when to start your preschooler’s journey into reading is a fun but challenging adventure!

 

It’s important to start slow, begin with two letter sight words, and stay positive with them! Try to mix up the activities that you do with them to learn sight words to keep them engaged and excited to learn!

 

I would love to help you on your journey to teaching your preschooler sight words. Whether you need some creative ideas or you need more helpful suggestions, please leave a comment below.

 

If you have any great ideas that you would like to share as well on what helped you teach sight words to a preschooler, please share them with us!

20 reading texts for children aged 5-6-7-8

A child who has learned to put sounds into syllables, syllables into words, and words into sentences needs to improve his reading skills through systematic training. But reading is a rather laborious and monotonous activity, and many children lose interest in it. Therefore, we offer texts of small size , the words in them are divided into syllables.

First read the work to the child yourself, and if it is long, you can read its beginning. This will interest the child. Then invite him to read the text. After each work, questions are given that help the child to understand what they have read and comprehend the basic information that they have learned from the text. After discussing the text, suggest reading it again.

Mo-lo-dets Vo-va

Ma-ma and Vo-va gu-la-li.
In-va ran-sting and fell.
It hurts no-ha, but Vo-va does not cry.
Wow!
B. Korsunskaya

Answer questions .
1. What happened to Vova?
2. What made him sick?
3. Why is Vova doing well?


Clever Bo-beak

Co-nya and co-ba-ka Bo-beak gu-la-li.
So-nya played-ra-la with a doll.
That's why So-nya in-be-zha-la to-my, and the doll for-would-la.
Bo-beek found a doll-lu and brought it to So-ne.
B. Korsunskaya

Answer the questions.
1. Who did Sonya walk with?
2. Where did Sonya leave the doll?
3. Who brought the doll home?


The bird made a nest on a bush. De-ti our nest-up and took off on the ground.
- Look, Vasya, three birds!
In the morning, deti came, and the nest was empty. It would be a pity.
L. Tolstoy

Answer questions.
1. What did the children do with the nest?
2. Why was the nest empty in the morning?
3. Did the children do well? How would you do?
4. Do you think this work is a fairy tale, a story or a poem?


Pete and Mi-sha had a horse. They began to argue: whose horse. Did they tear each other apart.
- Give me - my horse.
- No, you give me - the horse is not yours, but mine.
Mother came, took a horse, and became nobody's horse.
L. Tolstoy

Answer the questions.
1. Why did Petya and Misha quarrel?
2. What did mother do?
3. Did the children play horse well? Why do you think so
?










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FILVORDA for the development of reading, View here.

It will be interesting for children to read selected texts, they affect the emotional world of the child, develop his moral feelings and imagination . Children will get acquainted with the works of L. Tolstoy, K. Ushinsky, A. Barto, S. Mikhalkov, E. Blaginina, V. Bianchi, E. Charushin, A. Usachyov, E. Uspensky, G. Snegiryov, G. Oster, R. Rozhdestvensky, as well as fairy tales of different nations.

It is advisable to show children the genre features of poems, stories and fairy tales using the example of these works.

Fairy tale is a genre of oral fiction containing events unusual in the everyday sense (fantastic, wonderful or worldly) and distinguished by a special compositional and stylistic construction. In fairy tales there are fairy-tale characters, talking animals, unprecedented miracles happen.

Poem is a short poetic work in verse. The verses are read smoothly and musically, they have rhythm, meter and rhyme.

Story — small literary form; a narrative work of small volume with a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. The story describes a case from life, some bright event that really happened or could happen.

In order not to discourage reading, do not force him to read texts that are uninteresting and inaccessible to his understanding. It happens that a child takes a book he knows and reads it “by heart”. Mandatory every day read to your child poems, fairy tales, stories.

Daily reading enhances emotionality, develops culture, horizons and intellect, helps to cognize human experience.

Literature:
Koldina D.N. I read on my own. - M .: TC Sphere, 2011. - 32 p. (Candy).

How easy it is to teach a child 4-6 years old to read - the best methods and exercises

How to understand that it's time

To the question "When is it time for a child to be able to read?" there is no ready answer, but we want to immediately warn against two misconceptions:

  1. “You don't have to teach your child to read at home, they will teach you at school anyway. ” Yes, they will. But remember: the first year at school is the most intense in all 11 years of study. For some 4-5 months in the 1st grade, the child goes through the alphabet "from" and "to", learns to read, write, and the rest of the time he studies the basics of the Russian language. Therefore, it will be great if he has a reading skill before school. This will reduce the burden on the child.

  2. "There is no time to waste - the sooner the baby begins to read, the better." All children are different and develop at their own pace. Therefore, you should not impose teaching reading to a preschooler as soon as he is 4-5 years old, if the student himself does not yet show interest in this activity. Instead, you can begin to develop an interest in reading through bright and engaging books. A good option would also be games that involve letters.

The indicator to be guided by is not the age of the preschooler, but his speech skills.

It's time to learn to read if…

If the speech development of a preschooler proceeds without gross violations. Let's figure out what criteria will help you find out if a child is ready to learn to read:

  1. Understanding addressed speech. The kid must understand sentences, phrases, individual words that others around him turn to.

  2. Vocabulary. The more words a child knows, the better he will understand what he read. It will also help him communicate with adults and other children.

  3. Grammar. The ability to correctly build sentences, select and change words is important for children who are learning to read.

  4. Pronunciation. For learning to be effective, the child must know how to pronounce words without gross errors.

Remember: at preschool age, a child may have minor flaws in grammar and pronunciation - this is normal. Over time, these violations will be corrected, and they should not be considered an obstacle to reading. But if the baby is not yet very confident in speaking, do not rush him to read - this will not help develop speech, but only demotivate.

Practicing child psychologist Ekaterina Murashova

Free course for modern moms and dads from Ekaterina Murashova. Sign up and participate in the draw 8 lessons

How to make learning to read easier for preschoolers

  1. Praise more and never scold

    It's hard for us adults to imagine how difficult it really is for a baby to learn from scratch such a complex skill as reading. After all, being able to read means being able to correlate a sound with a letter or a combination of letters, connect sounds, understand the meanings of the words read and the meaning behind the text.

    If parents take the child's progress for granted and express dissatisfaction when the child does not understand something, this will not push the future student to development, but will only complicate the process. Therefore, it is important to praise for small victories: I learned the letter that was passed last time - great, I coped without my father's help with the word as much as two syllables - clever.

    Do not take failures as a consequence of the negligence of the little student. When a child does not understand the first time, this is an occasion to look for another explanation or give more time to practice. If you feel tired and irritated, you should stop the activity and return to it in a good mood.

  2. Exercise little but regularly

    Do not expect perseverance and a desire to spend hours figuring out unfamiliar letters from your baby. It is difficult for preschoolers to keep their attention in a lesson for more than 25 minutes, and even such small classes should be interrupted with physical education minutes and games so that the child does not get bored. This is exactly how Skysmart prepares for school: 25-minute classes with breaks for outdoor games.

    But regular practice is important - much more important than the duration of the session. And it doesn’t have to be just lessons: you can look for familiar letters on signs during a walk, on a door plate in a children’s clinic, on a package of your favorite corn flakes.

  3. Read books aloud

    In a series of studies conducted by Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates among five-year-olds who could not yet read, those children to whom their parents read aloud regularly for two years, expressed their thoughts in more literary language, built longer phrases and used more complex syntax.

    In addition, reading aloud with adults contributed to the expansion of the children's vocabulary, as parents explained the meanings of new words that children did not encounter in everyday life.

Expert Opinion

According to neuroscientist Marianne Wolfe, book evenings with parents help develop a love of reading because the child establishes a connection between reading aloud and feelings of love and warmth.

  1. Discuss read

    The role of communication in teaching literacy cannot be overestimated. At first, it is important to ask if the future student is interested, if he is tired, what was remembered from the lesson. When a preschooler learns to read coherent texts, be sure to ask questions about their content.

    It's great if the child reads on his own and without the prompting of the parents, but even in this case, do not deprive him of the opportunity to discuss what he read with you. For example, you might ask:

    • Which of the characters do you like?

    • Do you think this character is like you? Would you like to be like her?

    • What would you do if you were a hero?

    • Why did the described event happen? How are these two events related?

    • How did what you read make you feel?

    • What do you remember most from what you read?

    • What do you think the author wanted to teach? Why did he write this? Do you agree with the author?

  2. It is important to select questions individually, based on the age of the child. With younger children, discuss everything together, ask simple questions, direct their attention to some facts. The complexity of the questions should increase in proportion to the age of the child. The older he is, the more difficult the tasks should be, and the questions can already affect the "reflection" of their feelings and experiences.

  3. Go from simple to complex

    From the correspondence between sounds and letters to syllables, from short words to longer and more complex words. It would seem that this is obvious, but no: sometimes parents are so happy with the success of the child at first that they push him to study more complex topics than he is ready to accept. Of course, the program should adapt to the future student, but you should not skip steps, even if the child is making progress.

    There are methods that offer to teach a child to read by memorizing whole words. Alas, experiments show that such techniques generally work worse. For example, a group of scientists from the United States came up with an artificial alphabet and offered subjects to learn it, and then read the words written using this alphabet. At the same time, some subjects were immediately explained the principles of correspondence between sounds and letters, while others had to derive reading rules on their own based on whole words. It turned out that the first group copes with reading new, previously unfamiliar words better than the second.

    Therefore, we advise you to choose those teaching methods that involve clear instructions about the relationship between sound and letter - and this is especially important for those children who have difficulty reading. Below we have compiled a few of these techniques that you can use to teach your preschooler at home.

Methods of teaching preschoolers to read

Warehouse reading

The method of teaching a child to read through warehouses was actually used in Rus', but for modern parents this technique is associated with the name of the philologist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zaitsev.

Zaitsev suggests not focusing on the study of individual letters, as it can be difficult for students to understand how letters can merge into syllables and words. Teaching a child to read by syllables is also not always easy: one syllable can be quite long ( shine, ruble ), and the boundaries of syllables are not obvious ( Lun-tik or Lu-ntik ?). Therefore, in Zaitsev's methodology, a warehouse is used as the main unit.

Warehouse can be a combination of a consonant and a vowel (pa-pa, ma-ma), a single consonant or vowel (de- d , i-s -li, A -le-sha), as well as a combination of a consonant with a hard or soft sign (ma- l -chi-k, use d -yem).

In order for a preschooler to understand the differences between the recording of voiced and soft, vowels and consonants, different types of warehouses have their own cube size, color and content, thanks to which the cubes sound when they are shaken. Cubes affect several channels of perception at once, and warehouses should not just be pronounced, but sung - this way, according to the author of the methodology, learning is more interesting and effective.

One of the advantages of the technique is that children willingly play with blocks themselves, and the process of learning to read becomes active, mobile.

Syllabic reading

This technique, according to some sources, was developed by the Romans. Later, Nadezhda Sergeevna Zhukova, a Soviet and Russian speech therapist, created a primer based on it. In it, she built her own system in which sounds and letters are sequentially introduced into speech.

Due to the fact that the concept of a syllable is introduced at an early stage, it is faster and easier to teach a child to read syllables together. By the way, as in Zaitsev's technique, it is proposed to sing syllables, and not just pronounce them.

Based on the syllabic method, Zhukova developed a set of teaching aids - copybooks, copybooks and a book for reading. Benefits will help teach children to read correctly 6 and 7 years old at home.

Both techniques for teaching preschoolers to read are used in the Skysmart Ready for School course. The course consists of two stages: first, children get acquainted with letters and warehouses, which allows them to quickly start reading simple words, and then they learn what a syllable is. Gradually, we introduce more complex syllabic constructions, move on to reading phrases and sentences.

Sound analytical-synthetic teaching method

This method originated in the USSR and is still considered the main one in Russian schools and kindergartens. It was developed by the Soviet teacher and Russian language methodologist Voskresenskaya Alexandra Ilyinichna.

Same as N.S. Zhukova, Voskresenskaya proposed her own order in which children should learn letters and sounds. The principle of this sequence was that the child first learned the letters that can be combined into simple syllables, and then moved forward in the level of complexity. As a result, children learn syllables in this order:

  1. Two-letter syllables (including one consonant): am, ma, ra, etc. and simple words from them: ra-ma, ma-sha, Pa-sha, etc.

  2. Three-letter syllables with a vowel in the center: poppy, lat, etc.

  3. The combination of the first two stages into words: sa-lat, earth-la, etc.

  4. Words of three syllables and six letters: az-bu-ka, ve-se-lo, etc.

  5. Words of two syllables and six letters: question-ros, tea-nick, etc.

  6. Words with a combination of vowels at the beginning and at the end of the word: chair, March, etc.

In this way, children simultaneously prepare for more complex syllables at each stage and reinforce what they have learned earlier.

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Exercises for learning to read

Learning to read usually takes place in several stages. First, the child listens to the sound, visually remembers the letters. Different games will help with this, where you need to look for letters, invent words, etc. When this stage is over, you can move on to syllables and games to work them out. And only after that it will be possible to proceed to words, and then to sentences and texts.

Letter memory exercises

The first step is to teach your child to recognize letters. To do this, you can use pictures with hidden letters. We use such exercises in the preparation for school lessons in Skysmart.

Ask your child to identify what letter a word begins with, or name as many words as possible that begin with a certain letter.

Next, we train to distinguish correctly written letters from incorrect ones. This is also important for learning to write: preschoolers often mirror letters or distort individual elements.

Exercises for vowels and consonants

To learn how to distinguish between vowels and consonants, tasks will help you determine the sound with which a word begins.

It will also help to remember the difference between vowels and consonants and search for an extra letter.

Word building exercises

When your child can read short words, ask him to make a word out of letters on his own.

Composing words from syllables is convenient if you have cubes at hand, but you can also try on paper.


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