When looking for phonics books for kindergarten, you may find so many choices out there that it can be confusing! How can you narrow it down to what your child truly needs?
1) Try to find phonics books with a minimum of sight words. By kindergarten age, your child should already know his letter sounds and how to blend them into words. They should also know a few sight words. But they are really not ready for books with a lot of sight words or confusing letter blends in them.
Sight words are words that can not be sounded out. Words like: was, the, are, once. These are very confusing to a young emerging reader!
Lots of sight words can be completely overwhelming to a kindergartner, and make them feel that it’s just too hard to read. Later on they will learn additional sight words, and become more confident reader.
But for now, your child’s first attempts at reading and first experiences in school should be super positive. We all want that! Keeping the sight words to a minimum at this age will go a long way toward these goals!
2) Try to find books that are phonetically correct. What does “phonetically correct” mean?
Words that are phonetically correct are words that your child can sound out. The letter sounds “say” what they are supposed to say; using short vowels and hard consonants. They don’t have strange letter blends in them like, “eigh, oa, dge, tion”.
For example, they are words like “cat”, where the “c” is a hard consonant; not like “nice”, where the “c” is soft. Or words like “man” where the “a” is a short vowel; not “cake” where the vowel is long—or says it’s name.
At kindergarten age, your child is prepared to read words that are phonetically correct, they just need practice blending the letter sounds together to make words. Begin with stories which have two and three letter words, like “it, at, dog, fix, log”.
When your child is more confident, it’s time to move on to larger phonetically correct words, like “camp, drum, swim, mask”. Then as their confidence grows, you can introduce even larger phonetically correct words like, “picnic, twist, fantastic, napkin”.
Your child will learn about letter blends, silent letters and phonograms later in school. But their first experiences with reading, using phonetically correct words, will give them a strong foundation as they move through their reading journey!
3) Give your child lots of opportunities to read stories with little to no illustrations inside. (no illustrations inside in bold) When your child sees illustrations, they will use them to guess at the storyline.
Some educators will encourage their students to use the illustrations as “word clues” in the story. I respectfully disagree. This only encourages guessing, not using reading skills.
When your child guesses, the reality is that they will sometimes—or often—be wrong. This only sets them up to fail with each incorrect guess. Then they have to go back and try again. Nobody likes being wrong and having to try all over again.
Many parents know this. While sitting with their child at reading time, they are constantly hiding the picture with their hands so that their child won’t guess. Then they show the picture to their child only after they are done reading that page. Sound familiar?
I want your child to be successful from their very first attempts at reading!
This is why Miss Wendy’s Favorite Phonetic Books have illustrations only on the covers of each book, never inside. Your child will use their phonics reading skills, rather than guessing, and more often than not—be successful the first time!
4) When looking for phonics books, try to find stories that are appeal to your child’s interests.
You know your child best, and can help them explore their interests. Do they love to go camping? Do they like magic fairy stories? Are they in a swim class?
Help them to find books that talk about what they are doing in their own world, or what they love, and they will more easily engage with those storylines.
Learning to read is a challenging process! As you search for phonics books for kindergarten, these tips will help you to encourage and support your child to become a confident reader!
Miss Wendy