Essential Reading Activities to Build Skills | Phonics

What exactly is Phonics and how can I use phonics to help my child learn to read?

Phonics is a method of teaching reading, based on sounding out letters to read words. Let’s say that you learn the letter i makes the /i/ sound, and that the letter t makes the /t/ sound. And when you read these sounds together, /i/ /t/, you have it. You’ve just used phonics to read the word it.

Rag Minibook Activity

Here’s an easy activity you can do with your child using our phonics teaching method. In just 20 minutes, your child will be able to read a book all by himself by playing an easy flash card game and creating our free Learn to Read Minibook.

How to get started:

1. Make one flash card for each of the letters: r, a, g, s, d, c, t, p, n, and w, for a total of 10 cards. You can use index cards or just cut up a piece of plain paper.
2. Lay them on the table.
3. Help your child to put the cards together that form the words rag, sad, cat, pat, can, and wag. Call out the name of each letter and the sound it makes as you push the cards together.
4. Do this a few times until your child can do it all by himself.

Then print out our free mini-book:

Learn to Read Minibook Printable

To Assemble the Minibook:

1. Cut each page in half by cutting on the dotted line.
2. Stack all of the pages together with the cover on the front, followed by page 1, page 2, etc., until all of the pages are in order. Do not include the instructions.
3. Staple along the left side of the pages.
4. Finish the book by tracing all of the words with dotted lines.
5. Have your child color all of the pages.
6. Your child has already learned to read each word by playing the flash card game, so he is ready to read the book he just made all by himself!

Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read is full of activities just like this one, plus story books, workbooks, online games, flashcards, and much, much more. Check it out here.