A pre-reading game

Here is an easy and high-interest game to make for your emergent readers.

It is based on those basic pre-school workbook activities where you match the picture to the letter of either the inital or ending sound. I found that using real objects, ala Montessori, holds the child's interest much longer than workbook pages, and can also be used many times and in many different (and more flexible) ways.

I bought a large bag of mixed buttons from our local Hobby Lobby to use for sorting/patterning type activities and I noticed there were all sorts of tiny detailed object buttons in there, like tents, pumpkins, trees, etc., which were just perfect for this activity, but you could just get a basket and gather tiny things from all over your house like coins, toy animals, hot wheels, dollhouse accessories, whatever. If you've got older children I know you have tons of legos, marbles, math counters and the like lying around, and you could use those.

This is not just a pre-reading (phonemic awareness) activity, but also a terrific exercise for speech development.

I never had any trouble with my Dodo, who spoke in clear sentences pretty much out of the womb, but both my Scote and Ugha have trouble with certain sounds, and sometimes say them incorrectly. If you look in the picture above you can see Ugha turning all but blue in the face struggling to say "f-ff-fish". If she doesn't concentrate she is liable to say "wish, www-ish" instead and place it on the W, but she knows this isn't a wish, of course, but a fish, so she usually self-corrects at that point, or at least looks mightily confused until I say fff-fff. Then she easily places it on the f.

Once your child has mastered the initial/ending sounds she's ready for simple words cards to match to objects. Cat, hat, rat, log, tent etc. And then progressing into more difficult words. You could even continue with this game into sentences just by writing out a sentence like "The cat is under the tree." and having the child arrange the objects to match the sentence.