Reading in a Snap

I absolutely love to teach reading! Kindergarten is awesome because some kids come in knowing no letters and leave basically reading. I am working on creating a new reading program that will teach reading and writing quickly and easily. The activities are fun and hands on, so they will keep the interest of the children and they will not even know they are learning!

I had my cute, five year old cousin test out a lot of these activities for me. She is the cute "model" you see in the pictures below!

Each unit focuses on ten sight words. There will be 100 sight words taught by the end of the year.
Here are some examples of some of the fun sight word activities, each unit has a ton of other activities as well!

Dot Art is always a favorite activity!

Each month there is some type of puzzle that goes with the sight words for the month, these are the puzzles for the first month. 

There is a cute recording sheet that goes with the game as well.

Sight word play dough is fun too!

This game is so much fun! They roll the dice and write the sight words in the chart.

She had SO much fun playing this game!

"To" won, she was so excited!

Each unit (the first five) have a vowel focus. CVC words start right away, the first month is "short a" so all of the CVC words have the short a medial sound. They will need help reading these at first, but since they are exposed to these type of words early, they will be able to read them early as well.

There are 8 fluency sentences in each unit, for a total of 80 at the end of the year. Two days a week, a new sentence is introduced. The words in the sentence are simple CVC words with the vowel focus of the month and the sight words that have already been taught. They are added to each child's ring after they read them the first day they have it. 

There are also eight emergent readers each month. They start out as patterned reading and looking at the pictures at the beginning, then move on to reading previously taught sight words and simple CVC words. 

There is a letter each week, the first week being the month's vowel focus. Then, three consonants are taught following the vowel. The week starts off with a letter poem and then there are letter activities to follow each day. 

I also include video links for letter videos so that you can have your children watch these during the week, I love using songs and videos when teaching about letters. Auditory and visual learners both do really well with the song videos. Some even have motions to help the kinesthetic learners. 

One of my absolute favorite parts of this program is the reading journals. Each week I have a read aloud title. I read the book three of the five days of the week, there are three prompts that go with each of the books. These are awesome because they are very differentiated. Each child has the same prompt, but they can write at their own level. At the beginning, the prompts only require one word or copying a sentence. However, some lower level children may only be able to draw a picture and some kids may be able to write a full sentence. I think it is important to set high expectations, then let the children do the best they can do at their own level. By the end of the year, the children will be writing multiple sentences, these journals really show the progression throughout the year.

Both of these prompts are from the first unit, they are very simple. 

So far, I have completed units one through three. I am in the process of finishing the fourth unit. I will be uploading them as soon as they are completed. If you are interested in seeing any of the units, click the images below.