learn ABC with game mode 'match the word with the picture'

 So, your child knows his letters. I mean he really knows them. He can identify them out of order and knows most, if not all the sounds. What’s the next step? How do you get your child to move from letters to reading words?

Let’s stop and talk a bit about how kids learn to read. And what comes after the ABCs? There is a developmental progression most readers take and today, we’re going to explore it together.

Before we get too far into the next steps, it is important to understand that learning to read is more than just knowing letters and letter sounds.

After kids have a solid foundation in letters and phonological awareness, as we mentioned above, here are some next steps developmentally that you can take to help them learn to read. Please note that even though these are numbered 1 through 5, we are integrating and doing all of these things together. 

Short vowel words are the best place to start. Why short vowels? Because the patterns for short vowels are much more consistent than the patterns for long vowel words, making them easier read and spell. Below you’ll find the natural progression of teaching short vowel words to beginning readers.

• Short vowel word families. I start by teaching the child how to read words within the SAME word family with hands-on activities, like the ones from If you’re looking for an app,  Short Vowel Word Study App also has game-like activities for word families, too!

• Once the child can read words from one word family, I study two or three word families at the same time, such as AT words with AG words or AT words with OT words. The process of teaching word families can take several months with young readers, so don’t rush it. You’re building a strong foundation for reading and spelling.
• After kids are solid in reading a variety of short vowel word families, I remove the words from the support of their word families and work on reading various short vowel words, like in  Level 2 of  Short Vowel Word Study App.
• When a child can show me that he can read most short vowel words, I introduce blends and digraphs with the short vowel words like those found in my . Reading and spelling words that have these more complicated patterns is harder developmentally and takes a good ear, which we’ll talk about next.

• Once rhyming and syllables are under the child’s belt, we want to develop the child’s ear for words and sounds even further. This means that we start breaking words down into their individual sounds or phonemes. When doing this kind of sound work, I like to remove the visual letters completely. We play sound games, with pictures or objects around the house.

  • Phoneme Isolation– Phoneme Isolation games sound like: “What sound do you hear at the beginning of ‘apple’?” Kids typically are better able to hear either the first or last sound in a word, not the middle vowel sound, so start with those.
• Phoneme Blending– Phoneme is more difficult developmentally than phoneme isolation. I like to pick about 4 simple picture cards or objects from around the house (perhaps cat, dog, fish, and bug) and say, “I’m going to secretly pick one of these pictures and say the word slowly. Listen and see if you can figure out which word I’m trying to say by putting the sounds together faster. /k/-/a/-/t/.” (saying only letter sounds with about half a second between the three sounds).

• For LEVEL 1 (Short Vowel Word Families)

  • My child can read word families (like cat, sat, bat, fat, etc.)
  • My child is beginning to include vowels in her spellings (BAT for bat instead of B or BT for bat)

   

  For Level 2 (Short Vowel Words)

  • My child can read most short vowel words (like web, sat, log, etc.)
  • My child includes short vowels in her spellings pretty consistently and may be beginning to spell some blends (such as the FR in frog or the ST in step) and digraphs (SH- in shut and TH in thin)

   

  For Level 3 (Longer Words)

  • My child can read most short vowel words with blends and digraphs (such as fish, step, flag, etc.)
  • My child is spelling words with blends and digraphs more consistently

  Typically, these reading and spelling skills are developmentally seen in children who are in Kindergarten and first grade. But, all children are different, so be sure to check out the points above to make sure it is a good fit for your child.

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