8 Pre-Reading Activities for Young Children

Before young children learn to read, they need to have good experiences with words and books. They also need to develop many skills including memory and motor skills. Here are 8 fun activities to help children develop the skills they will need to learn to read.

1. Gather your children and play a name game. Let each child say his first name. Let everyone else in your household try to think of another word that begins with the beginning name sound.

2. With the use of a piano or xylophone, ask your children to become conductors. Ask them to hold up both arms for high notes, and point to the floor for low notes. Or they might stand tall for high notes, and sit small for low ones. If you play the scales, encourage your children to gradually raise and lower their arms to the pitch of the music.

3. If your children are just learning the alphabet, celebrate the letters by adopting one each week. Draw an outline of each letter with wide markers on sheets of construction paper. Ask your children to take the adopted letter of the week and change it into a cartoon character or strange animal by drawing details on the paper. Tell your children to give their character a name that starts with the adopted letter. Let your children place their letter creations on the refrigerator or home bulletin board.

4. Make a chart with graph-sized boxes. Ask your children and family members to print their first name, one on each line, and one letter per box. Invite the children to color each name in a different color with crayons. Look at your chart and ask the following questions. Which color is the longest? How many names begin with the same letter? Who has the longest name? Who has the shortest name? Do several names have the same number of letters? How many names end with the same letter?

5. Play a word game together. Say a noun, such as flower. Challenge the children to come up with ten words that tell about the word (pretty, petals, grow, smell, colors, and so on). Then say a verb like jump, and ask the children to tell you at least ten things that can use that action word (kangaroo, monkey, children, frog, and so on). Add motor skills by asking the children to act out the word. Talk about actions, words, and sentences. Tell the children that often more than one word will make sense in a category. For example, a leaf can be small AND green AND soft.

6. Play an "Add a Word" game with your family. Collect interesting pictures for a file. (You will use these often). Let each child in your family take a turn choosing a picture of an animal, house, plant, or person. Invite the child to hold up a picture and give one word that describes it. Go from person-to-person and asked each player to add another descriptive word. The first child might say; "I see a gray elephant." Others might add the fact that the elephant has four legs, a long trunk, is very large, and has a rough or wrinkled looking skin. Encourage your children to look carefully and brainstorm to find as many words that "tell about" pictures as possible.

7. Tell or read a story that has many characters. At the end of the story, tell the children that they have become famous detectives who can solve problems and mysteries. Ask questions about a character in the story. How tall was the character? What did he say? What was the character wearing? What was the character doing?

Try another game while the children are still being detectives. Ask an adult or another child to come into the room acting excited or angry. After the actor leaves, ask the children some questions about what just happened. Did the person that came in the room have glasses on? What color clothes was he/she wearing? Did you hear loud or soft voices? Reassure children that the person was only pretending.

8. Make a story quilt together. Begin with a large piece of paper from a roll such as butcher paper or freezer paper. Spread this on the floor and have the children decorate it in this fashion. Use old magazines to make quilt blocks with pictures they find that suggest stories to them. For example, find pictures of families, funny advertisements, animals, or scenic pictures. (Women's magazines are good resources for interesting pictures). Have the children glue the pictures onto the paper side-by-side and use a black marker to section off blocks.

Use this quilt to tell a story with your children's help. For example, "Once upon a time there was a family with a big black dog. They lived in a blue house with flowers in front, and a swimming pool in the backyard." Continue with stories and ask the children to draw pictures if no photographs carry the story line. They can add these pictures that they draw on the roll of paper (story quilt). How many different stories can you tell using the same pictures on this quilt?

As you engage in these 8 pre-reading activities with your young children you are helping them to develop the important skills that are necessary for reading in the future. Remember play is a means of learning and each time you play a game, young children are developing their listening, memory and pre-reading skills.

Sources:

Everyday TLC Magazine "Getting Ready to Read" May 1997 Issue
Personal Experience