Reading Activities To Do With Your Children

1.  Synonyms/Antonyms:  Take turns with your child naming pairs of synonyms.  Print each word in a pair on a separate index card or piece of paper.  Shuffle the words and turn them facedown on a table .  Then play a matching game with your child matching the airs of synonyms.

2.  Classification:  Name groups of three words that belong together ( such as baseball, football, tennis, vowels, consonant letters).  Then ask your child to add a word that belongs with the group ( basketball, baseball, vowels).  You can ask your child to name the group. ( In this example it would be games played with ball.

3.  Main Idea:  Ask your child to read some very short magazine articles on which you have blocked out the titles. Then ask him/her to suggest a title for each article.

4.  Sequence:  Ask your child to imagine "the perfect day."  Have him or her write down five or six sentences describing what he/she would do on that day.  For example, have a favorite breakfast, go to the beach, have a picnic, lunch, make a sandwich, ect).  Then ask him or her to put the sentences in the order in which he/she would do the things on "the perfect day."

5.  Fact/Opinion:  Ask your child to list some of her/his favorite foods.  Then have her/him write one fact and one opinion about each.  For example:  "Bananas have a yellow peel - fact/ and Bananas are very good-opinion.

6.   Read to your child:  If a book seems to difficult for your child to read independently, he/she will still benefit from hearing poems, mysteries, biographies, etc. read aloud.

7.  Compound Word Scramble:  This activity will give your child practice in recognizing and understanding compound words.  Print each of the following words on a separate slip of paper: in, to, birth, day, book, stores, etc.  Mix up the words.  Ask your child to put the compound words together.  Be sure your child understands that only certain combinations make actual  words.  They ask your child to use compound word in a sentence.