School-Aged Children
Options
Question for parents/teachers of Kindergartners
Hi Everyone! I have a 5 year old and I was wondering if anyone could suggest some first time reading books or spelling flashcards? DS is really doing well in school. We have really buckled down and have decided no TV for DS Mon - Thur.
We have study time and homework time as soon as he gets home from school. I was looking to add some activities for us - since we removed TV time. I would love to focus a little more on spelling and reading during our study time. Any suggestions would be great!
Thanks in advance!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Question for parents/teachers of Kindergartners
Our school really just recommends reading with your kids. DS really enjoys reading about different things like sharks, dinos and whales right now. Some books are specifially for early readers and others are chapter books.
We have some fun work books at home, nothing too academic, just some practice on things he's learning in school like beginning, middle and ending sounds to words. He talks about that stuff all the time, so I will have him try to sound things out on his own when he asks how something is spelled.
Our school recommends starfall.com and a few other websites if you want to do more outside of school. They have also sent home some fun work sheets for math concepts, like sorting the groceries when you bring them home and counting how many of each category you have (kids make up their own categories) and filling up different size containers with water to see which ones hold more, less and the same amount.
I just bought DS colored pencils to help make writing more fun, but we don't practice sight words or spelling. His school uses more of a phoenetic approach to spelling, which I'm ok with as long as he learns some of the rules for spelling that I mention to him at home from time to time.
If you are looking for easy reader books that you can use to help your brand-new reader practice the decoding and sight-word recognition skills they're learning in kindergarten, try the "Step Into Reading" series. These books are usually on a rotating rack in the children's section in Borders and B&N. Wal-Mart and Target also carry a good selection of books from this series.
Step 1 books have a red circle with a 1 on the cover. They feature very simple stories, lots of high-frequency sight words, lots of picture clues, and rhyming text.
Step 2 books are for kids who can handle slightly longer sentences and sound out somewhat more challenging words. Step 3 is even more challenging, and so on!
Both my kids learned to read on these books. Some particular titles we liked were:
The Dragon Egg
Mouse's Hide And Seek Words
The Big Egg
Cat Traps
Cooking With The Cat In The Hat
When my kids reached Step 2, they liked:
Dinosaur Babies and Platypus!
When my kids were at the "emergent reader" stage, I tried to divide our reading time between having them read to me from easy reader books and me reading to them from interesting picture books or easy chapter books. Even though my son can pretty much read on his own these days, he often still chooses these Step Into books for his homework reading. He loves to see how much he's improved. He'll say "remember when a Step 2 was so hard for me? Now I can read it by myself!"My ds loves the Franklin books and Fly Guy series (by Tedd Arnold).
No kids, but I'm a teacher.
As a PP mentioned Starfall.com is an great starting point.
Junie B Jones is a series the kids like. I, persoanlly, have mixed feeling son the series. Her (Junie's) grammar isn't the best and she can be very sassy to her teacher/parents/friends in the books so I tend to shy away from her.
Ready Freddy is another good series that my kindergartners enjoyed.
I completely agree with you. I'm assuming the OP may realize that it's too overwhelming at some point to have the child study/study/study for so long with little down time IF that's what she is planning on doing. I'm sure she isn't but you know what I mean. I hope she isn't setting her child up to hate schooling in general.
Thank you!!!! As a fellow teacher I started having my students write "go out and play" in their homework notebooks because they are five/six and they need to take a break from learning or else they end up hating it.
If you want your child to be successful the best thing you can do at this age is to read TO them. If you want to buy books for them to read on their own, talk to their teacher- he/she will know what reading level they are at and what will be developmentally appropriate for them. Most children just starting to read are not ready for the types of books sold at book stores and/or cannot read a book without a thorough book introduction and guided first reading. It's wonderful that you are eliminating tv time and want to help your child learn but it can easily turn into a battle which can lead to your child resenting learning or the quality time you have together.
I teach kindergarten....ditto starfall.com. Also, there are a couple of websites with printable "easy reader" books with sight words in them (i.e. "I see the dog. I see the tree." etc.) that you can get online...DLTK Kids has some, and Mrs. Hubbard's Cupboard. Those "Step Into Reading" books are nice, but I always feel like the first level is way too simple, and then the second level is way too hard, for kindergarten/beginning readers. The links for the printable books are in the 2nd blog in my sig, under "Sight Words," I think, and I feel like those are a lot more appropriate for kids who are just starting to learn sight words and to sound out simple words. That blog has lots of ideas for fun learning activities with kids that won't bore or frustrate them.
Just be careful not to turn learning/reading into a chore--at this age, learning experiences should be woven into daily life as much as possible and connected to his interests, rather than having an "OK, let's drop everything fun and sit down to drill flash cards and study" type of deal. GL!
Kiwi Fruit, 10.2.06 & Ellie Bug, 4.5.09
My blog: Bear With Us
Ideas on Teaching Your Toddler/Preschooler at Home