Reading games for fun

Six Games for Reading | Reading Rockets

Here are six games parents or tutors can use to help young readers practice word recognition, spelling patterns, and letter-sound knowledge. When planning to play one of these games, choose words to use from books the child is reading or has read recently. The games should also be chosen or designed to promote the child's sense of competence and success.

1. Concentration

To make

Select five to ten words from a book (or books) the child is reading. Print each word clearly and boldly on separate 3x5 inch index cards, making pairs of each word. (The child may be able to help you by copying the words you write.)

To play

Shuffle the cards and place them face down in neat rows. Take turns turning up two cards at a time and reading the words aloud. If the two cards match, the player keeps them and takes a second turn. If they do not match, the cards are replaced face down and the next player takes a turn. Play until all the cards are matched. The player with the most pairs wins. If the child has trouble recognizing a word, say the word — do not ask the child to "sound out" the word. The purpose of this game is to build automatic recognition of whole words.

You can control the difficulty of the game by the choice and number of words used: for very beginning readers, choose meaningful words that are visually distinctive: "ghost", "dark", "sister", and keep the number of words low. For a more challenging game, include some words that are less distinctive: "when", "what", "this", "that", but be careful not to overwhelm the child.

Variation 1

Instead of matching pairs, you can use rhyming pairs: look, book; dark, park.

Variation 2

This game can also be used to build letter recognition and letter/sound association. Paste or draw simple pictures on one set of cards; and on the other set, print initial consonants to go with the pictures. For example, paste the picture of a dog on one card, and write the letter "D" on a matching card.

Note: This game can be adapted to use with older children, or more advanced readers: variations can include vocabulary practice such as using homonyms, (words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings: cent/scent; dear/deer, etc.) or contractions, (can't; cannot, etc.).

2. Go fish

This game is good for early fluent to fluent readers.

To make

Select ten to 20 words from a book (or books) the child is reading. Print the words clearly and boldly on separate 3x5 inch index cards, making pairs of each word. (Children may help by copying the words you write.) Two to four players can play this game.

To play

Shuffle and deal three to five cards to each player. Place the rest of the deck face down. Players take turns asking each other for a card to match one held in his or her hand. If the opponent has a matching card, it is given over, and the first player takes another turn. If the opponent does not have a match, he or she says "Go Fish" and the player draws from the remaining deck of cards, and the next player takes a turn. Each time a player has a match, he or she reads the words, and puts down the pair, face up. Continue the game until the cards are all used up.

Instead of matching words, rhyming words can be used. In this case, players ask for "a word that sounds like 'night'..." At the end, the child can earn extra points by dictating or writing additional words that rhyme with the base words, or creating "silly" sentences using the rhymes.

Note: This game can be adapted to use with older children, or more advanced readers: variations can include vocabulary practice such as using homonyms (words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings: cent/scent; dear/deer, etc.), or contractions (can't; cannot, etc.).

3. Old maid

To make

Select three words per player from a book (or books) being read. Print them clearly and boldly on separate 3x5 inch index cards, making pairs of words. Choose one more word without a match that will be the winning card.

To play

Shuffle and deal three to six cards to each player. Players take turns drawing a card from a player to their left. If a player draws a card that matches one in his or her hand, he/she reads the two matching words in order to keep the pair. Play continues until all the cards are matched, except for the one odd card. The player who holds that card at the end wins the game.

4. Monopoly

This is a great game to help teach word family patterns and spelling patterns. This should be used with children who write fairly comfortably, usually second grade or older.

To make

Create a game board with four or five squares on each side. Prepare word cards with families of words that emerge from the child's reading: night, light, tight; went, bent, sent; hat, cat, bat. (For beginning readers or younger children, make sure the patterns are not too similar: mat, sat, rat; man, can, ran; met, set, bet.) Color code each word family and each side of the game board.

Place the words face up around the board in sets. To add to the element of chance, have other game directions on the board, such as "take another turn", "go back 2 spaces", etc. Prepare score sheets for each player with color-coded headings for each word family.

To play

Role dice or use a spinner to move around the board. Wherever a player lands he reads the word, then writes it in the appropriate "word family" category on the score sheet. Extra points can be earned by dictating or writing sentences with the rhyming words.

5. Rhyming games

Play rhyming games to teach about the patterns in words. Try the following, for example, for words in the same family as the word black:

Introduce a poem or rhyming story such as Miss Mary Mack:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
all dressed in black, black, black
with silver buttons, buttons, buttons
up and down her back, back, back…
Encourage the child to point out words in books that have a similar spelling pattern as in black.
Help the child think of other words that have this pattern. You may have to write a few words for him or her:
sack
pack
stack

Then have the child read the whole word and underline the repeated part of the word, "ack."
Using magnetic letters or Scrabble pieces, form a word with the "ack" pattern. Ask the student to change the first letter of the word (for example: 's' in sack) to make a new word, such as pack. You should be sure to provide a limited number of letters (two or three at first) for the child to choose from.
Remember to choose a word pattern that is useful and important to the student and that relates to something that he or she has read or will read. If possible, start with a word he or she already knows in the word family. After reading a book about being sad, for example, start with the word "cry" and then follow with "fry", "try", and "wry".
Remember to review the word families you've chosen to work on periodically by playing some of the other games described above.
Be sure to give the student a chance to go back to a book, poem, or other texts where he or she can apply this new reading skill. Poems, nursery rhymes, and jump rope jingles are a great resource for early readers.

6. Fishing for sounds

This is a game for emergent readers and writers.

To make

Find and cut out small pictures of familiar objects from magazines, old workbooks, catalogues. Try to find several pictures that start with the same letter, such as book, bed, basket, boy; snake, sun, skate, slide, etc. (The child can help; this is a good language activity too.)

Cut out 12-15 fish shapes and paste or draw one picture on each fish.

On individual 3x5 inch index cards or on an 8x11 inch piece of paper or cardboard, print consonant letters with a key picture for each group of pictures found. (For example, print the letter "S" with the picture of a sun to represent all the words beginning with that letter.) (If using a sheet of paper, print only two or three letters per sheet. )

To play

Select two or three sets of fish pictures that start with the same letters and mix them up. Place face down on a table and take turns "going fishing." As each fish is turned over, the child names the picture and places it in the appropriate pile under the key letter / picture. When all the fish are caught and placed correctly, have the child "read" the pictures under each heading. If necessary, read along with him or her, saying the letter name and stressing the initial sound of the word. "Yes, here are 'S' pictures: sssun, sssnake, sssaxophone."

To add excitement, you can play as opponents, each player having one or two categories and key letter / pictures. Take turns fishing, and discard those fish that belong to the other player.

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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

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schoolchildrenreadinggames

“The pleasure of reading is like running long distances.

This skill needs to be trained.”

Today, talking about how little children read is like talking about the weather: everyone discusses it, but it seems that nothing can really change. Literary critic Galina Yuzefovich and Elena Futalo, creator of the project for children about reading "Libroman", discussed whether it is possible to force children to read, how to choose books for your child (and not beat off the desire to read forever), and why YouTube is not a hindrance to books.

Why modern children read less than their parents in childhood

Elena Futalo: Here I will not be original, there are at least three reasons.

1. Books lose out to electronic devices and other low entry entertainment. After all, how does the gadget work? I took it in my hands - and after five minutes you can already do anything on the Internet. But to enjoy reading is a skill that needs to be developed gradually. It requires constant training - like long-distance running. Not every parent is ready to raise a marathon runner when you can easily and simply keep your child busy with the help of a gadget, thereby carving out a couple of hours for work, entertainment, sleep, after all.

2. The workload of the child himself. Look at his schedule during the year: school (this is already a big load), swimming, ballet, music, languages...

the same

But then his parents are waiting for him - and the book in his hands. There are, of course, children who know how to relax while reading, but for the majority, this is another job, like the same ballet or swimming.

3. Reading is perceived in our time as something archaic, dying out. No one says this out loud, of course, but this feeling is in the air, and children absorb it. Remember, there was a point of view that there would be no theater, only television would remain. So it is now: it seems that there will be no books - only virtual reality and moving pictures. But I am sure that just as the theater has not gone away (it has changed its status, perhaps, but has not disappeared and has not lost its significance), so with books - they will always be.

Can YouTube or video games replace books

Galina Yuzefovich: Books, paper or electronic, will definitely remain. Because there are and always will be people who prefer this particular type of entertainment, so to speak - a movie in their own head, to all others. At the same time, it is important not to oppose reading and computer games, reading and cinema, reading and any other forms of leisure. Parents today (and I am no exception, of course) are always tempted to put books at the very top of the value hierarchy and declare that reading is good, but this is all your favorite - comics, anime, games, superheroes, pizza, Ivan, God forgive me Guy on YouTube is terrible, tasteless and generally a disgrace. By positioning books in this way, we will cause nothing but rejection in the child.

It is important to recognize that we live in a different time, our children are not us

In addition to reading, they have a lot of good things - even if we are not always able to understand and love this good thing. To be completely honest, we, the people of the last Soviet and first post-Soviet generation, read as much as we read - not from a good life. In addition to books, we had cartoons twice a day for 15 minutes, "Visiting a Fairy Tale" once a week, one bike for two with an older brother (it's good if), and also Pioneer magazine once a month. Modern children have plenty to choose from, and this is wonderful - this is what we wanted for our children, so it’s stupid to shame and reproach them for this now.

It is necessary to teach a child to enjoy books — otherwise it is pointless

Galina Yuzefovich: It is very important that a child knows how to enjoy different things. For example, at the age of three, my eldest son ate only cheesecakes - he could eat them twice a day, and rejected the rest of the products. To all my attempts to expand his diet, he answered: “Why? Cheesecakes are delicious, and you yourself said that cottage cheese is healthy.” When I tell him about it today, he does not believe me and laughs: “What, you didn’t like steak? And apple pie? And potatoes? And even tomatoes? Well, you must!”. So it is with books - you need to teach your child to enjoy not only simple pleasures like gadgets or blockbusters, but also more complex pleasures - like books, classical music or a good movie.

Elena Futalo: Pleasure - yes, this is very important, in no case should you rely solely on "should", "useful", "correct". In our cultural tradition, hedonism is usually viewed with suspicion, but the motivation in the spirit of "there is such a word -" must "" is not enough for a long time, especially when it comes to such an intimate thing as reading.

First of all, parents should understand why children need to read. What is the purpose? The option “because I read it myself as a child”, of course, is immediately dismissed as meaningless and selfish. All the traditional answers - "to know more", "to be literate", "to develop one's horizons" - no longer work today.

So we need to think further. With my daughter, I decided that the main advantage of reading is the development of the imagination (something that you will never develop with any virtual realities, gadgets and movies), the development of emotional intelligence and empathy. And also the safe living of life situations, including difficult and painful ones, together with the heroes of the books. Today we focus on the development of intellect, on the acquisition of knowledge and competencies, and the emotional sphere goes somewhere to the periphery - it will grow by itself. No, it won't grow back. And here, in my opinion, there is no better tool than books. It is this task that I solve, it is for this task that I form a circle of my daughter's reading. If you understand that your task is different, you will have to select other books for your child.

It is impossible to force a child to read. So he will definitely not love books

Elena Futalo: If something is hard to impose on a child, then the only thing that can be achieved is disgust. I have seen many times how a parent tortures a son or daughter with something that he himself loved in childhood or simply finds useful, and receives a powerful rejection reaction. But to be aware of what the child likes, what his interests are, and to guide gently, without violence, is an important parental task. I know what topics my daughter is interested in, I see a book that may be of interest to her, I advise her to read it, and most often it works. It is often said that the child refuses to read at all, there are no books that would interest him. I don’t really believe in this: if you know your child well, you can pick up a book that is hard to put down. There are no non-reading children - there are books that are not interesting for this particular boy or girl.

Galina Yuzefovich: For me, another important thing (if we continue the topic of parental motivation to raise a child as a reader) is the opportunity to share love for something dear and important with a child. When my eldest son read one of my most favorite books - the novel "Don't Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro, and then we couldn't talk about it for half the night - this is incredible happiness. And almost the most serious disappointment in life was his refusal to read my favorite "Fifteen-year-old Captain" by Jules Verne. Today I'm used to it and I know that not all of my favorite books from childhood can be "shove" into my child. But this feeling of intellectual and spiritual community with children, which sometimes arises around this or that book, is for me one of the main reasons for cultivating an interest in reading in children. By the way, sometimes they bring me something and make me fall in love with them: this is how I read the book by Konstantin Sergeenko "Kees, Admiral of Tulips", which I missed in my childhood, but now I found it and highly recommend it to everyone.

Why is it important to read books aloud to a child (and this is not shameful)

Galina Yuzefovich: Many people are surprised that I still read aloud to a younger child. They say that he is ten - he should already read it himself ... One friend said that it was unnatural, how to breastfeed an adult child.

Elena Futalo: I am a supporter of reading aloud! Of course, my daughter can read by herself - and she does. But reading aloud are moments of my maternal happiness, intimacy, trust. We read something, discuss, hug, cry and laugh together over a book. And there are also books that are still difficult for my daughter to understand, but they are interesting to her. Therefore, I read them, and together we discuss incomprehensible points. For example, I asked my daughter to read Kashtanka. She read it and said it was boring: complicated archaic language, slow pace, no action. Of course it's boring. And then we re-read "Kashtanka" together: discussed, understood, cried. After that, my daughter said that this is now her favorite book.

Galina Yuzefovich: Yes, yes, my children couldn’t read “Deniskin’s Stories” by themselves — it wasn’t funny for them, because they simply didn’t know what a communal apartment was, and this made many things seem incomprehensible and boring. Children today live in a denser communicative environment than we do at their age, and for them the consumption of any information or culture always includes communication: send a link to a friend, share something on VKontakte. Reading aloud, we, as it were, include communication in reading. We discuss something with the child, add something and comment - the child is not left alone with the book (or rather, it remains, but not immediately and not always).

How to help a child fall in love with reading

Elena Futalo: Today children prioritize interactivity, they take it for granted. “Mom, where is the button on the book?” You can fight it, but this is a doomed struggle: children get used to reading from readers and tablets, we ourselves buy them for our children (because we don’t always want, for example, to drag a suitcase of paper children’s books on vacation). So to demand from them what we ourselves, in fact, accustom them to, is dishonest.

Positive incentives work better than negative ones. And it’s better to turn the children’s need for interaction and communication into something good

For example, to motivate my daughter to read more Russian (she goes to school in Austria and speaks mostly German), I created the Libroman project. This is a site where children compete to see who scored the most points for passing a test on a book they read. They test their knowledge, see who reads more around, who reads less. And it works: my daughter is so eager to fill out the test, test herself and improve her rating that she is ready to read more and faster. Of course, this should not be the only reason to read, but as an additional tool - why not?

You need to love to read and understand why it is important. If a child sees you more often with a book than in front of a TV or with a smartphone in his hand, then the chances that a reader will grow out of him increase dramatically. It's the same with talking about what you've read. You can ask the child to retell a book that made a strong impression on him - he will share his emotions with you, and at the same time he will practice his oral speech skills. But the main thing is to choose books well for a particular child, and not for some abstract girl or for yourself in childhood.

Galina Yuzefovich: Everything is relatively simple with my children: they hardly see me without a book, and with friends we mostly talk about books. The youngest son once described our trip to visit: “At first it was good - we ate. And then they started talking about their Yanagihara, and I fell asleep."

What kind of books will children aged 9 and 10 (and a little 14) like? ate The Master and Margarita for three days, alternates Agatha Christie's detectives with fantasy. He has always been an omnivorous reader - from science fiction to encyclopedias.

But the youngest, Timofey (he is ten), has quite pronounced preferences. From the freshly read, but already beloved: “Gymnasium No. 13” by Zhvalevsky and Pasternak, “Being a Cat” by Matt Haig, “Tim Thaler” by James Crews, “Emil and the Detectives” by Erich Kestner, “Land of Salty Rocks” by Sat-Oka, the trilogy “Books started” by John Stevens (by the way, it goes well after “Harry Potter”), “Momo” by Michael Ende and “Kees, Admiral of the Tulips” by Konstantin Sergienko.