First Grade Activities

Helping Your Child Connect Letters and Sounds

For children to learn the alphabetic principal, they need to understand:

· Letters represent speech sounds

· Letters go together to make words

· Changing the letters changes the sounds and the words

Read every day! Point to the text, tracking words as you read helps children make that connection.

Label it- provide labels and print throughout your house. Have your child help you label the following with printed signs for around the house: door, window, wall, dog food, toy box, kitchen, bathroom, etc. Label pictures of family and friends that are in the house too.

Make a Word Wall- Hang an alphabet in the house, have your child add words to it that they are learning, such as sight words, new words they learn from books, words of places they know, family and pet names, etc.

Provide Letters- Get 3 or 4 sets of magnet letters from a Dollar store, sort them by same letter or even upper / lowercase if you get both sets. Alphabet puzzles are great for the home too.

Sight Word Activities

Sight Word treasure hunt

· Find matching pairs of sight words

· Make an I Spy sensory bag to spot the sight words

· Create a game to get to the top of the stairs

· Find sight words in books

· Hang sight words on the bathroom mirror, refrigerator, the back of outside doors. Rotate them periodically.

· Keep a set in the car

· Use kid sight word songs from YouTube to dance and practice.

· Make two of each sight word on index cards, play Concentration.

· Use a Candy Land game to practice. The student has to say a correct sight word before moving their game piece.

Unit 1 and, be, help, you, play, with, for, what, have, he, look, too, do, find, funny, sing, no, they, all, does, here, me, my, who, friend, full, good, hold, many, pull

Unit 2 away, call, come, every, hear, said, animal, how, make, of, some, why, her, now, our, she,today, would, after, draw, pictures, read, was, write, eat, give, one, put, small, take

Unit 3 blue, cold, far, little, live, their, water, where, been, brown, know, never, off, out, own, very, down, fall, goes, green, yellow, grow, new, open, four, five, into, over, starts, three, two, watch, bird, both, eyes, fly, long, or, those, walk

Unit 4 around, because, before, bring, carry, light, show, think, about, could, sure, by, don't, there, car, maybe, first, right, under, food, sometimes, your, ground, these, done, paper, were, great, soon, work, laugh, talk, door, old, want, more, try, wash, mother, use

Unit 5 few, night, loud, window, noise, story, shall, would, baby, follow, years, begins, learning, young, eight, until, again, boy, nothing, along, father, together, began, house, ready, country, soil, kinds, earth, almost, covers, warms, buy, myself, school, city, party, seven, family, please

Unit 6 above, pushed, teacher, bear, studies, toward, even, surprised, always, different, enough, happy, high, near, once, stories, across, ball, cried, head, heard, large, second, should, caught, took, listen, thought, minute, idea, beautiful, friendship, brothers, everyone, field, loved, most, only, people, sorry

Blending Sounds to Read Words

· Guess the Word Game- adult says a word really slowly, breaking the word down by sounds, student guesses the word.

· Robot Talk Game- Do as in game above, only adult talks like a robot. Switch and let child says the sounds slowly using robot talk.

· Sound Blending Using Songs- to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know it, Clap Your Hands”

If you think you know this word, shout it out!

If you think you know this word, shout it out!

If you think you know this word,

Then tell me what you’ve heard,

If you think you know this word, shout it out!

After singing, the adult says a segmented word such as /k/ /a/ /t/ and students say the blended word cat.

Segmenting

1. Early in phonological awareness instruction, teach children to segment sentences into individual words. Identify familiar short poems such as "I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream!" Have children clap their hands with each word.

2. As children advance in their ability to manipulate oral language, teach them to segment words into syllables or onsets and rimes. For example, have children segment their names into syllables: e.g., Ra-chel, Al-ex-an-der, and Rod-ney.

3. When children have learned to remove the first phoneme (sound) of a word, teach them to segment short words into individual phonemes: e.g., s-u-n, p-a-t, s-t-o-p.

Segmenting cheer activity

Write the "Segmentation Cheer" on chart paper, and teach it to children. Each time you say the cheer, change the words in the third line. Have children segment the word sound by sound. Begin with words that have three phonemes, such as ten, rat, cat, dog, soap, read, and fish.

Segmentation Cheer

Listen to my cheer.

Then shout the sounds you hear.

Sun! Sun! Sun!

Let's take apart the word sun.

Give me the beginning sound. (Children respond with /s/.)

Give me the middle sound. (Children respond with /u/.)

Give me the ending sound. (Children respond with /n/.)

That's right!

/s/ /u/ /n/-Sun! Sun! Sun!