Games that teach reading

Obtain a few packs of flash cards and play snap when matching cards come up. If your child is advancing well you can play mixed upper and lower case snap. A snap occurs when two cards come up that are upper and lower case of the same letter.

Nominate a letter or number of the day and see who can spot them when going out shopping.

Take a pack of flash cards and spread them face down on the floor. Get your child to turn a card over and tell you the phonic sound of the letter. This game works well if you also put in a few animal cards as a surprise. This way you can reinforce the phonic sound of letter along side the sound that an animal makes. For example the letter C will make the sound ‘ker’ and a cat will make the sound miaow. Later on you can also introduce synthetic phonic combinations like ‘ch’.

Give you child simple three letter combinations like C A T. See if they can put the word together in the right order to spell out ‘cat.’ Make sure you have picture cards of simple phonic words so they can match their word to the picture card.

Using a large rubber alphabet/rubber floor mat, call out letter or numbers and ask your child to run and jump on the square a quickly as they can. You can also play this game phonically and ask them to jump on a square when you make a ‘dee’ sound so that that can run and find the letter D.  Click here for playmat available online

Hide flash cards and give clues to see if you child can find them around the house.

Select the numbers 1-10 on a rubber floor mat. Play some music and then turn the music off suddenly and ask the child to find the number 1. Reward with lots of praise. Turn the music on and dance around with your child and turn the music off again and ask them to find the number 2.