Step I: Pick a book appropriate for the child’s age.
We’ll start with something for a 3 – 5-year-old, so I’m going to pick, “Pete the Cat Too Cool for School” by Kimberly and James Dean.
Schools often use “Dolch” words in their curriculum. Dolch words are the most commonly used words and are arranged by age and grade. I’m going to start with the Pre-Primer words and see how many of them I can find in the book I selected.
Here we go:
to I it so look yellow
That’s enough to get started.
Step II: The Memory Game
Although I don’t like the idea of children wanting to learn just to get a reward, let’s make it easy on ourselves. M & M’s is my reward of choice. Two tiny little snack packs. The winner of each game gets ONE M & M. That’s right, one little tiny M & M. The person with the most M & M’s at the end of all the games gets the entire second bag. Okay, make up your own reward rules.
Here’s how we play the game. The same as any MEMORY GAME! Take a 3 x 5 card and cut it in half. Write the word “to” on one half and have the child write the word “to” on the other half. Do the same for the remaining words. Turn them upside down and take turns matching them. Here’s the catch – you can’t just look at the word, you have to SAY THE WORD out loud to get the match. Even if you don’t get a match, you have to SAY THE WORD as you turn over each one – match or not!
Step III: Find the Words
Give the child the book and maybe other books as well, and have them find the words they know: to, I, it, so, look, yellow. They can point, circle, highlight, whatever you think is appropriate.
Step IV: Build Sentences
Of course, not all the words in the story will be Dolch words but play this same game using all the words. Then, once you get some nouns in there, take the word cards and make sentences with them.
Step V: Allow The Child To Read You A Bedtime Story!
Then go on to the next book!
