Sort the pictures on each flower into the correct word family flower pot. We used mini-flower pots to make this word family picture sort even more hands-on for spring.

Now that my daughter (age 5) is becoming more and more aware of words and sounds and even starting to sound out consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, she was very excited to try a flower-themed word family picture sort. She loves flowers. The beautiful springtime is finally showing us tiny green buds and she cannot wait to

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My daughter is so proud that she can read simple consonant-vowel-consonant words now. She still needs to sound them out sometimes, but it comes with ease now. Because she’s gotten to this point of fluency, she can read for understanding.  The best activity we’ve done lately is switched the right words to the wrong words. It

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During wintertime, it’s easy to add “snow days” fun into your learning. Start with my snowman vowels sort freebie! Play with snowmen as you sort long vowels from short vowels in a simple phonics file folder game or classroom center. While you’re at it, here’s another wintery idea: Make learning fun with snowman breaks during

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My daughter loves dressing up as the ninja princess, the Princess in Black. Here's how we made our DIY princess in black costume, as inspired by Shannon Hale's early chapter books.

My first-grade-aged daughter has a one track mind these days. There is only one superhero she is good enough to emulate: the Princess in Black! This monster-fighting princess is definitely one of our must read favorite characters. Using my basic sewing skills and online tutorials, I created a perfect ninja princess costume for her! Our

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We sort words with multi-letter phonograms to better recognize their place in familiar sight words.

Now that Strawberry is gaining more confidence with the various sounds of the letters of the alphabet, she’s ready for understanding the concepts of digraphs and other multi-letter phonograms. Whistling Whales by Denise Eide introduces the 21 most important multi-letter phonograms and the multiple sounds they produce in English. After reading the picture book together,

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As I’ve been through Reading 1000 Books before Kindergarten with my two oldest kids, I’ve realized that there are various “stages” of reading with children, especially reading with my babies. I started reading with my babies from their infancy, and my third child is nearly two. My thoughts on baby-reading stages are based on my

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Building compound words and recognizing the parts of compound words is an essential pre-reading skill to develop. Once can't easily put words together without first hearing the parts of words!

Before a young reader can parse together phonemes to form a word, they have hear the parts of the words. Hearing the parts of compound words and blending words together is then an essential pre-reading skill to develop. The hands-on compound words activities we put together were fun for my school-resistant preschooler. My five-year-old daughter rarely

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