When I had a preschool in my home, I loved to play simple games with the kids to help them remember their letter sounds. No one ever wanted to stop playing, but I learned quickly that if you stop before they want to, it will be an even bigger hit when you play it again.

3 Easy Learn to Read Puzzle Activities

Sometimes parents try to over complicate activities to try and make them seem more exciting, but the best games are tried and true. That’s why the next 3 learn to read activities might seem simple to you, boring even, but for children, they are SO fun, especially because they are playing with you!

1.H&S – It’s a classic activity!

I know you are thinking that this MUST be good, because I’ve never heard it before. However, I had to trick you a little because you probably wouldn’t have read what I had to say if I made the title, Hide and Seek. Would you have?

This game is classic, but the most important thing parents miss out on is that children LOVE to hide almost more than they like to SEEK! So dump the letters out of the puzzle and have your child hide them around the room. “Not too hard now,” you can say!

Once you find a few, tell your child the sound of the letters and put them back in the puzzle to see which ones you have left to find.

You can ask your child for help finding and sounding out the letters. You might even get one wrong a couple times that you know your child knows so that they can correct you. Remember to tell them how smart they are when they do!

Get some FREE learn to read flashcards! Click here!

2. Letter Art – SO easy!

No tricks here! Get out the markers, crayons or colored pencils and have some fun tracing around the letter puzzle pieces. Remember to have them repeat the sound the letter that they are tracing around makes.

To help them learn to read even more, you can create words with some of the letters and help your child sound them out. Maybe create a word and then draw a picture below the nice big puzzle letter tracings.

3. Letter Relay – For Active Kids!

This learn to read activity has so many applications but here’s the short version. Take the letters that you are wanting your child to learn the sounds for out of the puzzle. Put them across the room. Have your child run, or hop, or roll, spin, skip, or crawl to one of the letter sounds you call out and bring it back to you. 

You can make this more interesting or challenging to your child by setting a timer to see how many they can get in a certain amount of time. You could make a little obstacle course by putting things for them to jump over or crawl under. 

Don’t forget to join in and take a turn! Your child might need a break! I know you are creative and can find other ways to make a relay really fun!

Learn to read activities don’t have to be complicated to be fun and effective! In fact, the more s

imple the better. We aren’t teaching our children how to play an elaborate game, they are learning to read! Make sure your learn to read activities are emphasizing the letter sounds, not the tasks needed to participate.

Comment below to tell me if you think of any other learn to read activities to do using a letter puzzle!

Check out these other Learn to Read Activities and Tips!

The post 3 Easy Learn to Read Puzzle Activities! first appeared on True Aim.

I made up this simple game using (affiliate) letter beads and pipecleaners to work on letter recognition and spelling CVC words in remedial therapy lessons and the kids loved it!

Letter Beads Spelling Game

This activity is suitable for kindergartners and up. Adjust word difficulty according to the child’s age.

A plastic cutlery tray was used to keep the beads and our Letterland letter and word cards. Using material we already had made this activity a frugal learning tool.

First we used the letter cards: the cards were moved from the back to the front. The letter in front had to be searched for quickly and placed on your pipe cleaner. The person with the correct letter bead on the pipecleaner first, kept it. At the end, the person with the most letters, won! Simple as that, but the competition part of this simple activity made it more challenging!

After searching for bead letters, we moved onto the word cards. Here we only used CVC cards, but for older kids one can use longer words.

We played in the same way, but now one has to find all the letters AND place them in the correct order onto the pipecleaner, making it a little more challenging. Now the child needs to find all the correct letters (letter recognition), use segmenting skills for breaking up the word to know which letters to look for, find all the letters and use blending skills to put the word together on the pipe cleaner again. Segmenting and blending skills are crucial skills needed for reading, writing and spelling.

Both of these activities work on letter recognition, fine motor skills and hand eye coordination too. The competition aspect just makes it more fun when playing more than two people, but one can play individully.

Use this setup for practicing sight words and alphabetical ordering too!

More fun letter learning activities you have to see:

15+ Preschool Letter Activities
Learning Word Families using Magnetic ABC’s
Fun with Words

Check out our Learn to Read Curriculum!

The post Letter Beads: Recognition and Spelling Game first appeared on True Aim.

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This Week’s Featured Posts…

Letter Matching Rainbow

Great way to learn upper and lower case!

Reading Comprehension Rainbow Bracelet

A genius way to guide kids through retelling a story.

Rainbow Activities and Free Printables

Lots of activities to teach your tots with free rainbow printables!

Rainbow Words

Learn to spell your name or anything else with this easy activity.

Rainbow Paper Science Experiment

Find out what is making all those beautiful colors.

Rainbow Hair Free Poem Printable

Children will learn how to read their colors through a poem and craft.

Counting Rainbow Goldfish

A fun free printable to do after you read the famous Dr. Seuss Book!

Counting Coins in Rainbow Sensory Sand

This sand is even fun to just look at!

Rainbow Sight Word Painting

Secret words are hiding on the paper. Do this with letters or numbers too!

Play with the Rainbow

Have some more fun with these rainbow play ideas!

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The post 10+ Preschool Rainbow Learning Activities and Mom’s Library #129 first appeared on True Aim.

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Tiggly – Interactive Math Toys for iPad

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This Week’s Featured Posts…

Alphabet Bottle Cap Christmas Tree

Fine Motor Button Christmas Tree

10 Christmas Science Activities

Christmas Do-a-Dot Printables

Christmas Themed Calendar Printables

Free Birth of Jesus Printable Book Cards

Christmas Phonics Activities

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The post Preschool & Kindergarten Christmas Learning Activities and Mom’s Library #118 first appeared on True Aim.

I’ve been looking for a fun pattern activity for my 2-year-old son, so I made one for the busy bag swap. I had small colored wooded cubes that we weren’t using so I put those in my busy bags and made these pattern printables to go with them.

Children can match the colored cubes to the squares on the pattern strips. When they get good at matching, you can add the patterns that have squares missing. They might not understand it right away, but they also might surprise you! I’ve made different levels of difficulty so you can use the ones that best fit your children.

To reinforce the letters for my preschoolers, I’ve also made Alphabet Cube Puzzle Printables. These help reinforce letter recognition and you can use them to support my Phonics Reading System.

My daughter really liked making the letters she is working on in her phonics lessons with the cubes. This is great for fine motor skills too.

To add even more play value, I’ve made Shape Cube Puzzles too. You can put a shape on the back of each letter to challenge your little puzzle masters and keep them busy longer.

Cube Puzzle Printables

You can find the (affiliate link) little wooden cubes at any craft store. I suggest printing the puzzles off on card stock or laminating them to make them last. For our busy bag swap, I made 4 bags and traded with the other moms and went home with 4 different activity bags that I’ll add to my growing collection.

There are 16 pages including the whole alphabet, shapes, numbers, and patterns. To download the free printables, click on the image above and save them to your computer. This is for person use only. Please do not share the link directly to the printable, but instead share this post. Thank you!

The post Free Alphabet, Pattern, and Shape Cube Puzzle Printables first appeared on True Aim.

First, we took a large sheet of paper.  Ours measured about four feet long.  I suggest making it even a little longer because a lot of our cars traveled past the paper length.  Six feet would work a little better.  On the sheet we wrote letters of the alphabet.  We used lowercase letters.  You could also use uppercase or a mixture of both lowercase and uppercase letters. Sight words or spelling words would also be great to use for older children.

Tape (packing tape or masking tape) the bottom edge of the paper to the floor so that the cars won’t get stuck when travelling across the paper.  My boys decided we need a few animal spectators (customers as my 3 year-old called them) to watch the races.

Next, we set up our ramp.  We used a cookie sheet and pillows.  This turned into a fun science lesson to figure out how changing the slope increased or decreased the distance the cars traveled.

Our cars were now ready to race across the letters.  We took turns selecting a car and letting it travel down the ramp and across the paper.  The boys then had to identify the letter where the car stopped.  We also talked about what letter the car was in front of or next to which helps build spatial vocabulary words.  Other times, we said the sound the letter represented instead of naming the letter.

We have played this game over and over again.  My kids like to compare which cars travel further.  It’s been fun to see them explore literacy and science concepts.

If you liked this letter activity, you might like this:

Parking Garage Learning to Spell Your Name

For even more letter activities, check out Jodie’s reading activities page on Growing Book by Book!

Jodie Rodriguez is a National Board Certified teacher, reading specialist and administrator with over 18 years of experience. She currently stays at home with her two young sons (3 years and 21 months). Her newest adventure is the creation of the Growing Book by Book blog dedicated to helping caregivers nurture young readers. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Google + and Pinterest.

The post Preschool Learning: Race to a Letter first appeared on True Aim.

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$50 iTunes or Google Play Giveaway!

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This Week’s Featured Posts…

Textured Alphabet Craft

A great way for children to see, feel, and learn their letters!  

Alphabet Playdate Party Activities

5 fun alphabet activity ideas, like this alphabet bingo snack game!  

Letter L Lego Activities

This is a great way to combine play with learning and can be used for all the letters in the alphabet!  

Letter G Activities

From ghosts to globes these activities cover LOTS of fun crafts.  

Letter E Activities

There are lots of fine motor practice ideas in this post like emotion drawing that is perfect for preschool.  

Gel Writing

Practice writing the alphabet with this mess free sensory method.  

Free Letter Books

These awesome books contain 6 songs or rhymes for preschoolers!  

Free Letter K Pack

Put some of these in sheet protectors and your children can do them again and again!  

Free Letter A Worksheet

Practice letter recognition with this simple worksheet.  

Alphabet Bean Bag Toss

This game is a little competitive, and a LOT of fun!  

Free Printable Alphabet Activity Pack

Includes 4 printable activities!  

Letter O Activities

My favorite is the Octopus color matching craft!  

Alphabet Sensory Play

This activity looks really fun, and not too messy  

Run Away Alphabet Letters Game

Teach children their letter sounds in minutes!  

Letter F is for Firetruck

Activities to help kids remember the “F” sound and fire safety.  

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The post 15+ Preschool Alphabet Activities and Mom’s Library #66 first appeared on True Aim.

Bananagrams is addicting!  Play it just once and you’ll be hooked.  It’s definitely worth the cost, but if you don’t have 14.99 to spend right now, don’t let that stop you.  You can make your own DIY letter tiles for under $5 and use them for a variety of reading and letter games, including Bananagrams!

These tiles are super simple!  The supplies you need may vary depending on what you want to use the tiles for.  If you are simply making Letter tiles for Bananagrams you’ll need:

Tiles – I got a 12×12 sheet from the Home Depot for $1.99 on sale.  They are 3/4″ mosaic tiles which are a bigger than regular Bananagrams.  You’ll need 144+ for a complete Bananagrams game.  I had just enough

Letter Stickers – I grabbed cheap letter stickers from the dollar store.

Clear adhesive or nail polish

Sandpaper – You might not need this if you get individual tiles, not a sheet.

Xacto Knife – Depends on tiles.

(Optional: Magnets)

How to Make DIY Bananagrams Letter Tiles

First, I removed the tiles from the mesh backing.  Mine peeled off, but you may need an Xacto knife to remove yours.  Next, I used sandpaper to smooth the back of the tiles and remove the glue.  Finally, I stuck on my stickers and gave them a coat of clear nail polish so they wouldn’t come off.  Done!  Here is a guide to see how many of each letter is in the Bananagrams game:

• 2: J, K, Q, X, Z
• 3: B, C, F, H, M, P, V, W, Y
• 4: G
• 5: L
• 6: D, S, U
• 8: N
• 9: T, R
• 11: O
• 12: I
• 13: A
• 18: E

Or, add flat magnets to the back to use them in a different way.

How to Play Bananagrams (ages 6+):

The object of this game is to be the first one who can create a group of interconnected words like a personal “crossword puzzle” after all the extra tiles are used.

To play, flip all the tiles face down in the middle of the table.  This will become the draw pile.  Have each player draw 21 tiles for a 2-4 player game (15, 5-6 players; 11, 7-8 players).  Then, one person calls “split” and everyone flips their tiles face up and starts arranging their tiles into interconnecting words.  When someone uses their tiles up they yell “peel” and everyone must take another tile.

If you cannot find a place for a tile in your crossword, simply yell “dump” and put it back in the middle, drawing three more at random to make an exchange.  You can also rearrange your crossword at anytime as long as all the remaining tiles make words.

The game ends when there are less tiles in the draw pile than there are players.  The first person to use all of their remaining tiles yells, “Bananas!”  If all of their words check out in the dictionary – they win!

Variations:

Remove the difficult letters from play for younger children.

Play a collaborative game with one big crossword.

Check out how to play Appletters.

Use the tiles like flash cards to do some fun flash card games.

Put them in this DIY Soda Bottle Apple case for a cute gift!

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The post DIY Bananagrams: Letter Tiles first appeared on True Aim.

Welcome to Mom’s Library!

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This Week’s Featured Posts…

DIY Sensory Numbers and Letters

This activity could serve double duty.  You could have your older children make the cards for your younger children to explore!

Free Printable Spelling Game

I can’t wait to try this with my daughter who isn’t a big fan of spelling.

Use Side Walk Chalk Games To Teach

Getting fresh air and moving your body will definitely help you learn!

Learning Through Camping

There is so much to learn from a camping trip!  Here is a special treat and books to get your children excited about their next camping trip.

Fireworks Phonics!

Neighbors will never know you are actually doing an educational activity!  Ha!

Unique Learning: Teaching Perseverance

These physical activities will challenge your young child and help form his character.

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The post 6 Unique Learning Activities and Mom’s Library #55 first appeared on True Aim.

Welcome to Mom’s Library!

Filled with parenting tips, activities for young children,
devotionals, crafts, recipes and more!
Check back again and again to see the new posts!

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next Library!
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Don’t forget to check out last week’s Mom’s Library!

This week’s fellow Librarians:

Life with Moore Babies,

Crystal’s Tiny Treasures

Ready Set Read!

The post 12 Preschool Activity Ideas and Mom’s Library #40 first appeared on True Aim.