Try these literacy activities with your intermediate reader:
- Ask your child to find and cut out all the words in a newspaper or magazine that she can read. Glue or tape them onto a piece of paper and practice reading them together.
- Keep a reading journal. Write one or two sentences about books you read.
- Draw pictures of the setting of books you read.
- Prefixes are sets of letters that are added to the beginning of a word, and suffixes are added to the end. Give your child a simple action word, such as heat. Ask your child to think of variations of the word by adding a prefix or suffix. For example: reheat, heated, heater, heating.
- Decoding is hard work! Try setting aside time each day to listen to your child read to you, and let him know how much you enjoy hearing him read and how proud you are.
- Explain to your child that sometimes two letters will stand together to create one new sound. The “h brothers” join with other letters to make the sounds: sh, ch, th, wh and ph. This can be confusing for kids, so make sure to write an example word and use gestures to help them remember the new letter combination. (examples: ch: touch your chin making the “ch” sound, sh: Make the “shushing” sound while holding your finger to your mouth, wh: bite into some white or wheat bread, ph: Pretend to talk on your invisible phone)
- Write three letters on a piece of scrap paper, for example b, n, and t. Have your child say each letter and its sound. Then ask, “What’s the LAST letter you hear in ‘run’?” Give them one point for each word they get right, and encourage them to try to earn five points.
- What books are you reading this month? Scroll down to see what is on our bookshelf.
Have questions or want to learn more about PCI?
Explore, download, and print:
I Spy
Super Sleuth
On our Dynamite Detective Bookshelf this month
- Frog and Toad are Friends
- Cat in the Hat
- Henry and Mudge
- Junie B. Jones
- The Adventure Friends
- I Can Read books levels 1 and 2
- Pete the Cat: Not So Grooby Day
- Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes
- The Napping House
- Put Me in the Zoo
- Llama, Llama Red Pajama
- Goodnight Moon
Pacific Charter Institute