A Bucket-List

Oct 9

Of course children need to learn sound and letter correlations in order to become a reader. This is obvious to everyone, and you can see it targeted in a lot of children’s toys. I remember having several toddler aged toys that helped teach this. Often they had batteries and repeated back the sound associated with a particular letter. Although I’d consider them one-dimensional, they were great at setting the tone for phonemic awareness.

A lot of parents might not know how to support reading comprehension through play, however. Reading comprehension requires a few skills all working together at once in order for a child to understand what they’ve read. Skills that are working together are what teachers refer to as- activating prior knowledge, using inferences, prediction, visualizing, and monitoring to understand what’s being read. Reading comprehension is definitely a skill that gets perfected over time, but there are a few fun activities you can do at home to help promote this.

Mystery Bucket

Find a bucket, place an object your child is familiar with inside, and set the bucket out of reach of the child. Start to slowly describe what’s inside the bucket to see if your child can guess what’s inside. Playing this game engages so many of the reading comprehension skills listed above. A similar game for purchase is Guess in Ten.

Guess in Ten

This game has a few variations for play as well as different themes.

Partner Bucket

You and your child each have a bucket. Secretly place an object inside so that the other person cannot see. Take turns guessing what’s inside the bucket by asking questions to each other.

Example: Is it a person? Is it an adult? Do we know this person? What kind of job does he or she have?

A similar game for purchase is Hedbanz. This game is a hit in our family. It’s minimal stress to set up and play, with ultimate learning rewards.

Hedbanz

Fill the Bucket

Pick a sound to focus on and try to fill the bucket with objects around the house that start with that letter. This can also be done to work on colors, numbers, attributes and more.

Example: Find objects that are shiny. How many square items can we find? Let’s fill the bucket with blue objects. How many items can we find that start with the “p” sound?

Sequence Letters is a similar game you can purchase. Children need to connect letters to the sounds on the board.

Sequence Letters

Set the Stage

Before reading a book, take some time to discuss the topic of the book with your child. Look at the pictures to get a sense for what the theme will be. After doing this, brainstorm words that they could come across while reading the text. Fill the bucket with these words and refer back to the bucket while reading, especially if a child gets stuck on a work that matches the theme.
Example: My daughter brings home a book about dogs. - Leash, collar, paw, treat, bone, walk, fur, etc. all go into the bucket as a way to prepare the reader before starting the text.

Classwords is a great game you can buy that would teach these skills. This one was a hit in my second and fourth grade classrooms. It’s a great quick game that really requires children to dig deep into their vocabulary recall.