First Grade

The most important activity you can do with your child everyday is reading. Read a book to your child and also have your child read to you. Try to find a quiet, comfortable place to read that is away from the TV , computer, or other distractions. Before you start reading the book take some time and introduce the book to your child by looking through the pictures and have your child make predictions about what they think will happen in the story. Always try to make reading a positive and enjoyable activity to do together.

Rhyming Pairs- Use magnetic letters and a magnetic cookie sheet. Make a simple three letter words such as dog, bug. cat. fan, can, hot, man, net, pan, rat, sit. Say the word and then say a second word that rhymes ( dog-log, bug-rug, cat-mat, fan-man, hot-pot, net-pet, sit-hit. Ask your child to make these rhyming words with the magnetic letters. Then ask you child if they can think of other words that rhyme with the words you have said and see if they can manipulate more letters to spell more rhyming words.

Spelling Words- Have you child practice writing three letter words (CVC-consonant/ vowel/ consonant words). Say the word and then go back and say the word slowly so that your child can hear all the sounds in the word. (Ex. say the word CAT and then go back and say the individual sounds C-A-T) See if you child can write the sounds you are saying and then go back and blend the sounds together to say the word.

Word Families- Have you child write a three letter word such as CAT. Then see if you child can change the first letter and write BAT. Next, have your change the first letter again and write RAT. Continue having your child change the initial letter in the word to create new words. Activities like this will help you child understand word families. They will begin to realize if they can spell and write CAT, then they can spell and write all the other words in the -AT family. (bat/rat/ mat/fat/ hat/ that and many more) Practice doing this type of activity with other word families (-et/ -it/-ot/-an/ -en/ -in/ un). This will help develop not only your child's writing abilities, but their word recognition when reading.

After you and your child have read a book, ask your child what his/her favorite part of the book was and have your child draw a picture about their favorite part of the book. Then ask them to write a sentence about their favorite part of the book that they just drew for you. Start out with one sentence, but as the year progresses, ask them to write two or three sentences about the book.

Another writing activity that is fun to do with you child is to have them start writing a journal. Just get a plan spiral notebook or pad and have them write what their favorite thing was that happened to them or that they did that day. Your might have them date each page when they write. This will also serve as a nice reading activity when you have them go back and reread pages in their journal. They will enjoy reading about things that they did in the past and have fun enjoying their past stories.

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/six-games-reading - Reading Rocket Sight Word Games- Great site for sight word activities.

https://mrsperkins.com/ - Mrs. Perkins Dolch High Frequency Sight Words (This is a great site to practice sight words on. You can get lists of all the grade level sight words and actually do visual and audio practicing on this site with the sight words.