Teaching your child to read can be challenging if you only use story-books because children generally have short attention spans. So, they will end up losing interest quickly if all you put in front of them are pages and pages of words.
Instead, you can play games with them that help them read better and have fun too at the same time. These games can turn your kids into the next child prodigy.
Word-recognition Games
You will need around ten plain cards to make this game. Pick two of the cards and write a word on them like kitten or torch. Do the same with the rest of the cards, and this way, you will end up with 5-word pairs. Place all the cards face down on a table and ask the child to turn two of them simultaneously.
If they are the same, the child can keep them and score a point. If they are different, then the next player gets to turn two cards. Keep going until all the pairs have been matched. The child with the most pairs wins!
Playing this game is a sure-fire way of getting your kids to learn how to recognize words independently. This is especially recommended for kids in kindergarten or Class 1.
Beginning Sound Games
For this game, you will need to make 10-15 animal-shaped paper cut-outs. Fish shapes are a good idea because they are quite simple to cut. Label 2-3 of the cut-outs with one letter of the alphabet and draw a picture of an object that starts with that letter on it. For example, you could have a B pile with pictures of a ball, bat, or bottle.
Make the other piles in the same way, then shuffle them and ask your child to turn each fish cut-out one by one and start adding them to the correct alphabet pile. To do this, your child will need to read the pictures, which will help them recognize that all the pictures in one pile start with the same beginning sound.
Rhyming Word Games
Rhyming games are the best way to teach your child about words that have similar spelling patterns. So, a rhyme with the words mat, bat, cat, and hat can help children see that all these words end with “at.”
Once the child understands how to pick out these spelling patterns, you can read poems and nursery rhymes with them while asking them to identify all the rhyming words they recognize.
Concluding Thoughts
All the games mentioned above can help children recognize words and spelling patterns. Parents can use them as a means to helping their kids become much better readers. Children who have good reading skills always do better on comprehension tests and score a higher final grade.