Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and sound out words. This printable activity gives your child practice with short-A words.

Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and sound out words. This printable activity gives your child practice with short-E words.

Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and sound out words. This printable activity gives your child practice with short-I words.

Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and sound out words. This printable activity gives your child practice with short-O words.

Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and sound out words. This printable activity gives your child practice with short-U words.

The ability to describe events and tell stories is an important prereading skill. Children with good narrative skills understand story structure and that stories have a beginning, middle and end.

Sounding out, or decoding, words with the consonant-vowel-consonant pattern (such as dog) is a great place for an emergent reader to start. In this printable, sorting words based on their sounds helps children pay attention to the individual sounds within words.

This printable activity asks children to choose between adjectives and to draw an image to match the descriptive words that they have selected.

As they become readers, children need to understand that different texts have different purposes. In this printable, children distinguish between different types of texts, such as lists, newspapers, and signs.

Enjoy Rip's alphabet jokes as you practice correct letter formation.

A word family is a group of words that rhyme and have the same spelling pattern. For instance dog, hog and log are in the _og word family. Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and decode words.Young children find the _at family the easiest, so begin there if the other word families seem difficult. If your child needs help coming up with a song, start with a song or rhyme you already know, like Hickory Dickory Dock, and substitute your rhyming words.

Distinguishing between individual sounds in a word develops your child's phonemic awareness, the ability to hear individual sounds within words and manipulate them. Identifying the letter that makes that sound develops your child's understanding of phonics, or how sounds and symbols are related. Forming letters by hand helps your child develop automatic letter recognition. These skills are cornerstones of learning to read.

Print this coloring page to help your child understand word families. Children who understand word families have an easier time learning to spell and decode words.

Kids like puzzles. Successfully decoding a secret message gives kids a great feeling of accomplishment. While having fun your child will also be working on identifying and writing the initial letter in a word, important skills for reading and spelling.

Kids like puzzles. Successfully decoding a secret message gives kids a great feeling of accomplishment. While having fun your child will also be working on identifying and writing the initial letter in a word, important skills for reading and spelling.

Knowing alphabetical order will help your child use a dictionary or index.

Providing blanks to fill in to complete a message helps your child to become an independent writer.

Poems and stories written for children are often full of similes: comparisons between unlike objects that use the words like or as. After reading poems with similes, try to write one of your own.

Making their own books gives children confidence in their writing skills.

Use music to help your child make the connection between spoken and written words.

Encourage your child to build simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words from letters.

Use a favorite song to practice blending sounds into words.

Help your child make a collage made of pictures of different words that rhyme.

Help your child recognize the common letter sound within a group of words.

Play a riddle game for words in the CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) pattern.

Help your child pack an imaginary bag only with words that rhyme.

Make a family scrapbook with your child that includes family photos and family facts.

Spark your child’s imagination and interest in reading and creative writing.

Telling a tale from another point of view streches the imagination and enhances comprehension skills.

Learning to read is one of the most important skills your child needs for school and life success. Start at home, now, to encourage growth.

Choose children’s books wisely with these helpful criteria.

Encourage a love of reading in your child with these ten suggestions from The National Head Start Association.

Research shows that children who read a lot have better vocabularies than their peers who read little. No surprise there, but the real revelation is that the avid readers have higher cognitive abilities, better reading ability, verbal intelligence and practical knowledge of the world.

Early literacy opportunities at home encourage reading readiness. Use these tips to help your child develop the prereading skills that will prepare him for kindergarten.

Children love to role-play. Add writing to their pretend world and they'll be more likely to take chances in expressing themselves.

Give your child practice with word and letter recognition.

Shaping cookie dough into the letters of the alphabet gives your child practice learning letters.

Challenge your child to discover how many ways she can use or identify the assigned letter of the day.

Stretch your child's vocabulary and his acquaintance with colors with a simple box of crayons.

Encourage your child to keep a journal in words or drawings to express feelings.

Show your child how reading and writing are useful in everyday life.

Show your child that books and reading are important.

Help your child find his inner storyteller by stretching his imagination.

Here are a couple of word games kids and grown-ups can play anywhere!

Play a verbal word game with your child to improve her reading and spelling skills.

Read simple chapter books to your child so he can create the pictures in his head.

Encourage a quiet child to open up to practice listening and speaking skills.