Reading games 1st graders
Reading Games for 1st Graders Online
1st Grade Reading GamesChildren love stories and books. And what better way for them to practice than to read on their own!
We love doing what we are good at, and children are no different. The more a child can read, the more they will want to. Learning the right methods and techniques can help children read faster. Fun reading games for 1st graders help engage and push children to read more words, build fluency, and gain familiarity with reading concepts. It also develops a greater interest in reading, writing, and spelling as a result.
When kids have fun, the process of learning becomes thrilling. Online reading games for 1st grade include phonics games and sight words games.
Other ELA games you can explore are: reading games, writing games, writing sight word games, letter tracing games, etc.
How Do We Introduce Reading to 1st Graders?Introduce reading after your child is well versed with letter and vowel sounds. While most learners in this grade will be fairly familiar with them, always practice them regardless because it is possible for children to lose touch with these concepts or forget them.
Learn to read games for 1st graders can also be used to introduce the concept of reading and reading skills. Your child can practice phonics, sight words, vowel sounds, vowel teams, rhyming words and much more with such games. This allows children to be introduced to reading in a way that’s fun and engaging.
How Can We Make Reading Fun for 1st Graders?Some of the best reading games for 1st graders can be used to make the process of developing reading skills fun! These games are innovative and fill your child with creativity and a want for learning. They set your child up for success perfectly by using varied techniques and encouraging consistent practice. Exciting and bright visuals make the process of learning reading skills fun and engaging.
How Can Games Help Better the Reading Skills of 1st Graders?Online reading games for 1st grade help kids pick a concept and allow them to practice similar groups of words or patterns. Children learn to work with word groups with ease. Fun reading games for 1st graders help kids make strong associations between words, their sounds, their formation and other language elements. This helps in building a better understanding and thus enhances their reading skills greatly.
Suggested Reading Worksheets
View all 338 Worksheets
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I teach my 1st grader reading skills?
1st grade reading games are wonderful tools to teach your first grader reading skills. Help your child recognize, build, rhyme and match words with these fun games. Your child can also explore words with long and short vowel sounds, initial blends, nasal blends, word families, end blends and practice to find the odd one out with fun reading games for 1st graders online.
- What to teach 1st graders in reading?
Kids should learn about long vowel sounds, initial and ending consonant blends, magic E words, vowel teams, bossy R and soft sounds in the first grade. Online tools and resources can be employed to help teach children these essential ELA topics.
- What are some of the best fun reading activities for 1st grade?
Some fun reading activities and some of the best reading games for 1st graders include: making story predictions, practicing rhyming words with fun poems, making a visual story flipchart, etc.
- What are the best books for reading for 1st grade?
Short fiction story books and poetry books for kids are amazing tools to practice reading skills with your first grader. A lot of poems include fun visuals, rhymes, and interesting backdrops that make practicing reading really interactive. Storybooks have bright illustrations that make them quite eye-catching. They help in creating a strong association with words, stories and characters.
Your one stop solution for all grade learning needs.
Give your child the passion and confidence to learn anything on their own fearlessly
Parents, Sign Up for Free
Teachers, Use for Free
4413+
4567+
10 Free Online Reading Games for 1st Grade
The reading skills taught in first grade are crucial in developing a level of understanding students can build upon throughout the rest of their educational journey.
Our team of former educators created these effective and engaging no-prep resources you can use to help your students master key standards, all while fostering a love of reading! All of the games listed below are tailored to your state standards and can be found within eSpark’s personalized reading curriculum. Try out these free online reading games for 1st grade with your students!
Found in the Quest “Sh” and “Ch”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Help Fox and Raccoon build a campfire! Select the correct items that start with “ch” or “sh” to help Fox collect sticks.
Found in the Quest “Context Clues”
Expand your vocabulary at Dakota’s Dog Rescue! Select which dog you would like to care for, then learn new words as you complete each task.
Found in the Quest “Questions about Stories”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Uh oh, Rama Llama broke the one rule of their friend group—they caused drama! Find out what happened in this colorful, llama-filled story.
Found in the Quest “Long and Short Vowels”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Olive the Knight needs your help. Help her find the long and short vowel sounds to scare the dragons away from the castle.
Found in the Quest “Blend Sounds to Make Words”
Help Chris move out of his house. Read each word, sounding it out out loud, then select the picture that matches each word until Chris’s moving truck is full.
Found in the Quest “Sh” and “Ch”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Jacob is putting on the Ch Parade, and he needs your help getting it ready. Choose the items that start with “ch” to build the floats.
Found in the Quest “Prefixes and Suffixes”
Select your character to race against other animals through the jungle. Answer questions about prefixes and suffixes to speed past the other cars and win the race!
Found in the Quest “Questions about Stories”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Best friends, Rabbit and Cat, are neighbors. Find out what adventures they get up to and answer questions along the way.
Found in the Quest “Find the Main Idea”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Have you ever played The Floor is Lava? Read this story to learn how to play!
Found in the Quest “Retell Stories”
Click here to assign the Small Group Skill
Squidge doesn’t like going to the doctor. One morning, as he headed out to school, his mom told him he needed to visit the doctor today. He tried hiding and crying and running away. Read the story to learn how his visit went!
Looking for more free online reading games for 1st grade? eSpark offers thousands of student-approved, no-prep activities for K-5 classrooms.
Comments
5 simple games that will teach your child to read with pleasure
“I don't know what to do! My child doesn't want to learn to read!" many mothers complain. Of course he doesn't! No one will be happy if they are forced to do something boring day after day: “Look, this is the letter “A”. Repeat! Ah-ah-ah-ah! And this is the letter "B". What letter is this?..” As a result, everyone is unhappy: the child who is waiting for all this to end, and the mother who laments, well, why doesn’t anything work out as it should! But in order to teach a child to read with pleasure, you need to show that this process can be creative, very exciting and fun. How to do it? Says the creative mother of two daughters, blogger Natalia Igonina.
Natalia Igonina and her daughters Veronika and Valeria
The life of a small child is an amazing country full of discoveries and magic. In order not to ruin his desire to explore the world and learn something new, try to turn even the most boring activity into an exciting game. Those that I offer will not require any expensive materials and a lot of time. All you need is a creative mood and a desire to share your knowledge with a child. Try to do it with love.
Reading in capital letters
To make it interesting for your child to get acquainted with new letters, make a stencil for tactile-visual memorization together with him. On a sheet of A4 paper, draw a large letter that you are going to study. There are several options for how to play with such a stencil: you can lay out the surface of the letter with pebbles, shells, candies; paint the letter with a brush or fingers; make plasticine patches; roll massage balls along the contour of the letter or draw it on colored sand or semolina. Start learning to read by getting to know the vowels, and then enter one consonant letter at a time and substitute it with the vowels to form the syllables "AM", "EM", "OH", "BA", "BE", "BI" and so on . Take your time, spend one day studying one letter.
Making our own reading simulator
So, we learned all the letters, learned how to add syllables from them. Now let's show the child how to read by syllables. To do this, we need to make a compact simulator. It is not only mobile, but also universal, because with its help you can work out both open syllables (“MA”, “BA”) and closed ones (“AM”, “Hedgehog”). Take transparent caps from sour cream: 5 caps for consonants and 3 caps for vowels. There are 4 letters on each cover. Give the child the "consonant" and "vowel" parts of the simulator and show what happens if you combine them.
Reading by caps
When the child has mastered syllabic reading, offer him to read short words consisting of three letters. To make such activities interesting, make homemade cards that will help keep your child’s interest for a long time. On a piece of paper, write the syllables "KO", "RA", "VO", "LA", "LE", as well as letter combinations with "windows", for example, Z_L, K_T, R_T, D_M. We will also need white lids from gouache or plastic bottles. Write the letters A, O, Y, K, L, W, Z, T on them with a permanent marker. Invite the child to substitute the caps for the syllables on a piece of paper and fill in the empty “windows” with them. What words did he get?
Learn to read quickly
To learn how to read fluently, you can play two exciting games that your child will definitely like.
Half word
Cut some cards out of paper. On each of them write words of different lengths and read them together with your child. Now cut each word in half and shuffle all the halves. Ask the child to take any half of the card and understand what the word is written on it. When the child understands the algorithm, feel free to switch to books. Take a ruler or paper strip and cover half of the word or sentence in the text with it. Invite them to read "at the top" of the words, and then at the bottom halves of the sentences. It is very exciting!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Lost Letters
Take a paper strip and cover the end of the words in the book with it and ask the child to read them in full. When the baby has mastered this exercise, you can complicate the task a little and close the letters in the middle of the word. ⠀⠀⠀⠀
Learning to read attentively
If you have old newspapers or magazines, completed developmental manuals and drafts, then you can offer children such a mindfulness game. Name any letter of the alphabet and ask the child to find and color (cross out, circle, underline) it in the text. Further, the task can be complicated, for example, cross out each letter "A" and circle each letter "R". Such a game not only helps to remember the spelling of all the letters of the alphabet, but also develops attention, concentration and perseverance. ⠀
I hope that these games will help turn any activity into an exciting game that the child will want to return to again and again, inventing something new!
Read also:
10 secrets of parents whose children love to read
6 reasons why our children do not like to read
Video: personal archive of Natalia Igonina
⠀⠀⠀⠀
schoolchildrenreadinggames
10 cool games that will teach your child to read quickly and without errors
How to teach a child to read confidently, fluently, correctly? Interest and captivate! We offer a selection of games from the teacher, speed reading and memory development instructor Guzel Abdulova.
Gyuzel Abdulova, neuropsychologist, teacher, speed reading and memory development coach, head of the Eidos Center for Intellectual Technologies
These exciting games will not only arouse interest in reading, but also help develop memory, attention and the level of understanding of texts. Play - reading, read - playing!
"Racing"
What should be done? Invite the child to read his favorite poem several times, each time increasing the speed and power of the voice.
Purpose. The exercise significantly increases the speed of reading, improves reading technique and promotes the development of speech.
"Foreigner"
What should be done? We read the words, highlighting the last syllable, as if with a "foreign" accent. Reading text or columns of words. For example:
In a healthy body healthy mind.
Not the one who is RIGHT who is strong, but the one who is honest.
A tree is supported by roots, and a person is supported by friends.
And Vaska listens and eats.
Elbow is close, but you won't bite
The cuckoo praises the rooster for praising the cuckoo.
Alone in the field is not a warrior.
Purpose. This exercise helps children get rid of the habit of swallowing endings. It is quite tedious, so we complete it for 30 seconds.
"Voices"
What should be done? The task is to read the text in the form of a person or animal, cartoon or literary character. Discuss with the child how Baba Yaga or a mouse, a hare or a wolf would read this text.
Purpose. The exercise improves the reading technique, helps to captivate the child with reading, to show that it is fun and interesting.
"Funny Pictures"
What should be done? For this exercise, you need to match text with a large number of pictures. Cut the pictures and mix. The task of the child is to arrange the pictures in order to restore the sequence of events.
Option 1. Read the text and put the pictures in order.
Option 2. Tell a story from pictures. Then read the text and compare your version with the one proposed.
Purpose. The exercise contributes to the development of semantic reading and a deeper understanding of what is read.
"Magic puzzles"
What should be done? Cut the text into pieces-puzzles and mix. We invite the child to collect them and read the restored text.
Purpose. The exercise is rather difficult, and memory, attention, and thinking are involved. The skill of semantic reading is being improved. At first, you need to choose familiar texts, better - fairy tales.
“The word is lost”
What should be done? We read the text aloud, skipping words. The child must understand which word was missed.
Target . The exercise contributes to the development of attention, the formation of the skill of semantic guessing and a deeper understanding of what is read.
"First and last"
What should I do? The child reads the text, saying aloud only the first and last letters in the word. Then he should tell what he read about.
Purpose. The exercise trains concentration and quick switching of attention, teaches you to perform several actions at the same time: read, understand, memorize.
Head-tail
What should I do? Option 1. An adult reads the beginning of a word, and the child must find the "tail", that is, the end of this word. To do this, you need to quickly scan the entire text, find the word and read the ending.
Option 2. The adult reads the beginning of the sentence, and the child must find its ending.
Purpose. This is a good training for the skills of "scanning" the text with the eyes, concentration and semantic reading.
"Read and count"
What to do? The child must not only read and understand the text, but also count the words. Naturally, for starters, you need small texts - from 10-20 to 40-50 words.
Target. This exercise helps to develop attention and better understand the text.
"Shooting a movie"
What to do? We invite the child to imagine a movie in his mind based on the text. We help with leading questions, find out what he sees and feels when he reads. The task is not only to understand what the text is about, but also to hear sounds, feel smells, tastes, and experience the emotions of the characters. The child must answer your questions and retell the text.
Purpose. Develop figurative memory, speech, retelling skill.