What Homeschool Looks Like: Reading Review

The homeschool year has officially begun for us! We planned on starting the day after Labor Day, like the local school district does, but we got Mollie's reading curriculum a few weeks earlier, and she wanted to go ahead and get started. After writing this post, we made a decision and ordered the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program. Each grade is divided into two levels, and we are over halfway done with the first Kindergarten level. It's been going really well, and Mollie is catching on really fast. The lessons are short and pretty basic. The only thing I'm not totally happy about is the lack of activities or games to reinforce and review what's learned in the lessons, so I've spent some time trying to find hands-on ways for Mollie to practice what she's learning.

 Yesterday, I pulled out our plastic eggs from last Easter and made these reading manipulatives. The larger side of the egg has three different word family endings (ex. -at, -ap, -am), and the smaller side has three beginning letters. By twisting the egg, you can practice reading words and seeing what happens to a word when you change the beginning or ending sound.

I also made a simple Bingo game using the sight words she's been learning. She loves games, and already knows how to play Bingo. I thought this was a hit, and I was right! I'm sure we'll be using this a lot to review.

During each lesson, we always pull out our CVC tri-blocks, and practice making the words from the lessons. All three of the kids love playing with them, so a lot of times I'll dump them on the floor for Dede and Lincoln to use while I'm going over things with Mollie. Here she is using them with a free Bob Books printable I found here. A group of six bloggers teamed up and each created a few free printables for every Bob Book, so those have been really helpful. There are 20-30 printables for each book, so it's easy to pick-and-choose a few that you think would work for your child.

If you have any review ideas, I'd love to hear them!