Learning to read begins at home through everyday parent-child interactions, long before children attend school. Your continued support of literacy development throughout elementary school positively affects your child's reading ability. We are pleased to provide these Family Activities with easy-to-follow instructions to help your child practice foundational reading skills. We invite you to view the short Family Videos for tips on how to use the activities to help your child grow as a reader. Using the Family Activities at home can help your child develop language, link sounds to letters, blend letters and word parts to read and write words, and read for understanding.
Kindergarten: Developing Language
Talking While You Read
Having a conversation about a book will develop your child's vocabulary and knowledge about the topic of that book. Whether you are reading a fairy tale, a picture book, an informational book, or any other text, you can engage in a discussion as you enjoy reading together.
The best books to use have detailed pictures and are about topics that are interesting to your child. You can use books from your home or borrow a book from your child's classroom library, school library, or the public library. You can also access books on laptop computers, tablets, digital reading devices, and smartphones. Websites such as Project Gutenberg provide free access to eBooks and your phone's app store includes free apps containing books for children.
To engage your child in conversation, you can use a tool called PEER: Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, and Repeat. See the Talking While You Read tri-fold and Bookmark for an example of how to use PEER.
Talking While You Read (Bear Says Thanks)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom uses some of the important words, like bare, from the book to ask questions and talk about the book.
- Mom has the Talking While You Read Bookmark in her hand to remind her about the kinds of questions to ask.
- Mom encourages her son to answer questions in complete sentences by modeling how to do so.
- Mom rereads the relevant part of the story if her son doesn't know the answer to a question.
Talking While You Read (Llama Llama and the Bully Goat)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom asks several "wh" questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) to provide opportunities to engage in a conversation about the book.
- Mom relates the activities in the book to her daughter's life.
- Mom and daughter discuss words and their meanings ("equation", "bully").
Talking While You Read Trifold
The Talking While You Read Trifold includes an overview of how to use PEER. There is also a story with questions placed where they are most helpful to prompt your child. Remember to read the story through one time first with your child. On the second read, use PEER as you ask each question.
Talking While You Read Bookmark
You can use the Talking While You Read Bookmark to engage your child in conversation while reading any book.
Supporting Oral Language and Vocabulary Development
Oral language is the way we communicate with others through speaking and listening. Vocabulary knowledge is a crucial part of oral language and includes understanding the meaning of words, how to use them, and how to pronounce them. Speaking and listening to your child every day about books and his or her experiences will help your child expand his or her vocabulary. Children with strong oral language skills and larger vocabularies typically become better readers. The best ways to give your child a strong foundation for learning to read are to read to, talk to, and listen to your child every day. Talk about people you know, places you go, and experiences you have together. Writing with your child also helps with oral language development.
Ask questions that require more than a yes or no answer. For example, instead of asking, "Did you have a good day?" ask, "What was your favorite part of school today?" Continue to ask questions about your child's response. If the answer was "Recess," ask, "Who did you play with?" "What did you do?" "How do you play that game?"
When you speak with your child, model speaking in complete sentences and provide details. For example, if your child points to a butterfly and says, "Butterfly!" say, "Yes, that is a monarch butterfly! Aren't her colorful wings beautiful?"
Cooking Conversations
Key Points About the Video
- Adults listen and ask open-ended questions to extend the conversation.
- Adults correct children, as needed, and encourage complete sentences.
- Adults ask children to read notes written on napkins to engage them in understanding written messages.
Talking and Writing in the Kitchen
Use these questions, activities, and conversation starters to have fun while you talk and write in the kitchen.
Dinner Table Talk
Key Points About the Video
- Children have fun baking cupcakes and talking about what they are doing.
- Caretaker fully involves the children in reading the recipe, gathering ingredients, and making the cupcakes while talking about what they are doing.
- Caretaker asks several questions and encourages both children to engage in the conversation.
Grocery Shop Talk
Use this resource to make a grocery list with your child. Ask your child questions and engage in conversations while you grocery shop together.
Kindergarten: Linking Sounds to Letters
Sounds in Words: Syllables
Help your child link sounds in speech to letters in print.
Being aware of sounds in words is very important to reading. This awareness allows children to break apart words orally and use sounds to learn to read and write words. They demonstrate their knowledge using their speaking and listening skills.
You can help your child develop an awareness of sounds in spoken words. Singing silly songs and making up silly words or poems are ways to enhance your child's awareness of sounds. You can make up silly sentences where most of the words begin with the same sound: Leo the lion liked to lick a lot of lollipops!
There are many types of different sounds in words. One skill is separating words into syllables, or parts, like knowing that the word folder has two syllables, or parts: fold-er. And the word computer has three syllables or parts: com-pu-ter. Being able to separate words into syllables will help children break a word into parts to help read and spell words.
Syllable Sort
Key Points About the Video
- Mom explains that a syllable is a word part and provides an example.
- Mom shows her son how to play the game by providing examples.
- Mom encourages her son to clap the word parts when he isn't sure of how many syllables are in the word banana.
Clap Word Parts (Syllables)
Help your child identify syllables in spoken words.
Syllable Sort
Help your child identify the number of syllables in spoken words.
Read Aloud and Syllable Practice (Silly Sally)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom selects a word and asks her son to clap the parts, or syllables, of the word.
- Mom selects words with different numbers of syllables, such as two or three, to give her son several times to practice counting syllables.
- A few times, Mom asks her son to describe what a word means and repeats his answer in a complete sentence to help build oral language skills.
- Mom is enthusiastic, so sharing the book is enjoyable.
Books to Share
When reading to your child, select some words from the book and have your child determine how many syllables are in those words. Suggested books to read to your child:
- Silly Sally by Audrey Wood
- We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault
Sounds in Words: Rhyme
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Sounds in Words: Individual Sounds
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Letter Names and Letter Sounds
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Linking Sounds to Letters
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Kindergarten: Blending Letters, Recognizing and Reading Words
Blending Words
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Word Families
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Decodable Words
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High-Frequency Words
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Challenging and Important Words
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Kindergarten: Reading for Understanding
Accurate and Efficient Word Identification
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Recognizing Misread Words and Correcting Errors
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Oral Reading Practice
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The Family Activities were excerpted from A Kindergarten Teacher's Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills, which include Kindergarten Videos.
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Kindergarten: Developing Language
Expose your child to the language that is common in books and in schools.
Having a conversation about a book will develop your child's vocabulary and knowledge about the topic of that book. Whether you are reading a fairy tale, a picture book, an informational book, or any other text, you can engage in a discussion as you enjoy reading together.
The best books to use have detailed pictures and are about topics that are interesting to your child. You can use books from your home or borrow a book from your child's classroom library, school library, or the public library. Also, keep in mind that you can access books on laptop computers, tablets, digital reading devices, and smartphones. Websites such as Project Gutenberg provide free access to books and mobile formats especially for smartphones. Don't forget to look through your phone's app store for free apps containing books for children.
To engage your child in conversation, you can use a tool called PEER: Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, and Repeat. See the Talking While You Read tri-fold and Bookmark for an example of how to use PEER.
Featured Videos
Talking While You Read (Bear Says Thanks)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom uses some of the important words, like bare, from the book to ask questions and talk about the book.
- Mom has the Talking While You Read Bookmark in her hand to remind her about the kinds of questions to ask.
- Mom encourages her son to answer questions in complete sentences by modeling how to do so.
- Mom rereads the relevant part of the story if her son doesn't know the answer to a question.
Talking While You Read (Llama Llama and the Bully Goat)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom asks several "wh" questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) to provide opportunities to engage in a conversation about the book.
- Mom relates the activities in the book to her daughter's life.
- Mom and daughter discuss words and their meanings ("equation", "bully").
Talking While You Read Trifold
The Talking While You Read Trifold includes an overview of how to use PEER. There is also a story with questions placed where they are most helpful to prompt your child. Remember to read the story through one time first with your child. On the second read, use PEER as you ask each question.
Talking While You Read Bookmark
You can use the Talking While You Read Bookmark to engage your child in conversation while reading any book.
Oral language is the way we communicate with others through speaking and listening. Vocabulary knowledge is a crucial part of oral language and includes understanding the meaning of words, how to use them, and how to pronounce them. Speaking and listening to your child every day about books and his or her experiences will help your child expand his or her vocabulary. Children with strong oral language skills and larger vocabularies typically become better readers. The best ways to give your child a strong foundation for learning to read are to read to, talk to, and listen to your child every day. Talk about people you know, places you go, and experiences you have together. Writing with your child also helps with oral language development.
Ask questions that require more than a yes or no answer. For example, instead of asking, "Did you have a good day?" ask, "What was your favorite part of school today?" Continue to ask questions about your child's response. If the answer was "Recess," ask, "Who did you play with?" "What did you do?" "How do you play that game?"
When you speak with your child, model speaking in complete sentences and provide details. For example, if your child points to a butterfly and says, "Butterfly!" say, "Yes, that is a monarch butterfly! Aren't her colorful wings beautiful?"
Featured Videos
Cooking Conversations
Key Points About the Video
- Adults listen and ask open-ended questions to extend the conversation.
- Adults correct children, as needed, and encourage complete sentences.
- Adults ask children to read notes written on napkins to engage them in understanding written messages.
Dinner Table Talk
Key Points About the Video
- Children have fun baking cupcakes and talking about what they are doing.
- Caretaker fully involves the children in reading the recipe, gathering ingredients, and making the cupcakes while talking about what they are doing.
- Caretaker asks several questions and encourages both children to engage in the conversation.
Talking and Writing in the Kitchen
Use these questions, activities, and conversation starters to have fun while you talk and write in the kitchen.
Grocery Shop Talk
Use this resource to make a grocery list with your child. Ask your child questions and engage in conversations while you grocery shop together.
Kindergarten: Linking Sounds to Letters
Help your child link sounds in speech to letters in print.
Although speaking and listening may not seem related to learning to read, being aware of sounds in words is very important to reading. This awareness allows children to break apart words orally and use sounds to learn to read and write words. Children first need to become aware of sounds in words without relating those sounds to print. They demonstrate their knowledge using their speaking and listening skills.
You can help your child develop an awareness of sounds in spoken words. Singing silly songs and making up silly words or poems are ways to enhance your child's awareness of sounds. These skills are fun to practice because most children love to play with sounds in words. You can make up silly sentences where most of the words begin with the same sound: Leo the lion liked to lick a lot of lollipops!
There are many types of different sounds in words. For example, one skill is being able to separate words into syllables, or parts, like knowing that the word folder has two syllables, or parts: fold-er. And the word computer has three syllables or parts: com-pu-ter. Being able to separate words into syllables will help children break a word into parts in order to read or spell the word.
There are many different types of sounds in words. For example, rhyming words represent a type of sound relationship between words. Children need to have the ability to recognize when words rhyme. Words rhyme when they have the same ending sound. For example, blue and shoe rhyme and moon and spoon rhyme. When children recognize words that rhyme and can say a word that rhymes with a word they are given, they can use known words to read new words—for example, they can use the known word fall to help read the unfamiliar word wall.
Although speaking and listening may not seem related to learning to read, being aware of sounds in words is very important to reading. This awareness allows children to break apart words orally and use sounds to learn to read and write words. Children first need to become aware of sounds in words without relating those sounds to print. They demonstrate their knowledge using their speaking and listening skills.
Being able to recognize the individual sounds in words is the most important skill for learning to read that is related to sound awareness. When you see a letter between forward slashes, /s/, say the sound of that letter. If you see a letter without forward slashes, s, say the name of that letter. An example of phonemic awareness is knowing that the word cat has three separate sounds (/k/ /a/ /t/) and that the first sound in cat is /k/ and the last sound in cat is /t/. Recognizing individual sounds in a word that is spoken will eventually help children "sound out" a word when they begin to learn to read simple words. For example, a child who can hear three separate sounds in sat, /s/ /a/ /t/, can then link a letter to each sound, s a t, and read the word sat.
It is also helpful if children can identify beginning and ending sounds in a word. For example, in the word cat, the beginning sound is /k/ and the ending sound is /at/. In school, we may talk about word families. Word families are groups of words that have the same endings. For example, bat, cat, and sat are all in the same word family.
It is important for children to know letter names and letter sounds.
- Letter-name knowledge is recognizing and naming letters. An example of recognizing letters is when you show a child the letters N, A, and S and ask which letter is S, the child points to the S. An example of naming letters is when a child looks at the letter M and orally names that letter.
- Letter-sound knowledge is demonstrated when a child can look at a letter in print and tell you the sound it represents. For example, if you point to the letter F and ask, "What sounds does this letter make?" the child will say, "/f/."
There are many ways to support your child's knowledge of letter names and letter sounds. For example, you can look for a specific letter in a book or in a newspaper and then ask your child the sound that letter represents. You can point out letters on signs while in the car. You can sing the alphabet song while getting ready for school or doing chores at home. You can have your child identify specific letters in a magazine and then practice writing the letters.
An important step in learning to read is being able to connect how words are separated into individual sounds with knowledge of how letters relate to sounds. For example, being able to hear the individual sounds in the word sat, /s/ /a/ /t/, and knowing that s represents /s/, a represents /a/, and t represents /t/. Word-building activities can be used to support your child's learning to read and spell.
