Ladybug started You Can Read Sight Words! She hasn’t been interested in learning to read, but recently that interest spiked and thankfully I had all of my You Can Read stuff organized and we pulled it out and got busy! She is currently 5 years, 1 month old.
Here’s a post sharing You Can Read Unit One with Krash when he did it!
Unit Organization
You can see how we store ALL of our You Can Read stuff here. For current units I use this metal file container {Target} and hanging folders. The pink ones are You Can Read units, the yellow are her Kindergarten Literature Unit Study Printables. I have a daily lesson plan for both in a sheet protector in the front. The You Can Read printable lesson plan is here.
We won’t necessarily always get a unit done in 5 days, sometimes it will be more. I do have the activities divided out into 5 days but then shift things around as needed. It gives me a starting point to grab from each day.
She was thrilled to begin and had just recently shown an interest in learning how to read. Before then she displayed all of the reading readiness skills except the desire to learn! Now she has the desire and we are rolling!
I have been asked a lot how we do things so I am trying to outline it for you as much as possible, there’s even a couple of video clips! I am not sure if I will blog all the way through You Can Read like this, but if it is helpful, I might, let me know! Below you will see exactly what we did on each day and how I spread it out. During this same time period we did our Hi! Pizza Man unit also, working with that in the morning and this in the afternoon.
This is a LONG post, and it’s meant to be, hopefully to help those of you who want massive details!
Day One
Here’s a before shot showing what we did together on her very first day using You Can Read. We focused a LOT on the sight word caterpillar and instead of hanging him on a wall we are using our pocket chart so we can take the circles down and use them during the lesson.
I introduced the words to her and had her repeat after me, using the caterpillar. Then we went to trace the shapes, in the dry erase center. She enjoyed this a lot!
Next, we made the words using the cut out letters. I pulled the word she was working on down from the caterpillar so she could copy it.
We read her very first easy reader together and then she read it to me {was sitting in my lap for that so no picture}. Then I got the word circles and asked her if she could find the words in the book! She is reading Farm Friends from the Scholastic First Little Readers set.
Her first color by number sight word! And she was gladly using her pom pom pencil grip correction!
She ASKED if she could write a sentence using her new words. Why YES sweetheart, you sure can!!! She was so excited to know how to spell the new words and so proud of the word she already knew {CAT}. Here’s her first invented spelling story.
Here’s the translated version of her story. She said, “Look at the cat hanging from the letters!”
Day Two
Here is the before shot for day 2. We are doing You Can Read activities in the afternoon and do our Kindergarten Literature Unit activities in the morning.
She went straight for the puzzles!
We read the easy reader book next {in my lap of course}. The book I chose is School, from a very old Scholastic set we have.
After reading together she wanted to trace.
She loved the stamping!
So proud of her for being willing to use her pom pom pencil grip corrector, it continues to help so much!
I am SO excited about the new addition to the You Can Read program! I have added all of the You Can Read units plus review units to Bitsboard so our children can play games with the words on the iPad. In Bitsboard she can choose which games she wants to play with her words. She chose Photo Touch {the word cards are considered “photos”}, Word Builder, and True or False which are all three shown in the photos below.
I will be writing up a tutorial soon, but if you already know how to use Bitsboard, you’ll be able to find the You Can Read boards on your own and use them too! I’m almost positive this app is only available in the Apple market and not Android, unless my searching was not showing me something, I am sorry for those of you who use Android. If you install Bitsboard to your iPad/iPhone, use the search feature and search “You Can Read,” and our boards will show up for you to download.
Day Three
This was down below, I used the magnetic letter construction kit to make her words for her. Within minutes she had turned them into cats.
We played BINGO first, with mini Spielgaben pieces.
I premade the letters for her words from the Letter Construction Kit and she put the words together.
Here’s a video showing her putting them together
Here’s a video of her reading them when she was done!
Dot Painting her funny font words…
Here’s a video of her dot painting her words…
We read our easy reader and then found words in the book.
Here’s a video of her finding her words…
Finally, she colored her color by number sight word. Funny thing, she doesn’t really like this and Krash LOVED it!
Day Four
{this is the 2nd week, we did 3 days the first week}
We worked with this unit for 2 weeks. I only set up two activities for her this day, since I knew the sensory bin word search takes awhile!
She loved this as much as Krash did.
Here’s a video of her doing the word search…
Here’s a video of her graphing the words after she found them all.
A quick word search and we were done!
Day Five
{week two}
I set up a few activities for her and she chose what to do first.
Play Dough words was her choice!
We then went on to play throw and read. We used our Education Cubes inserts for our words and took turns tossing the cube and reading the word it landed on.
Finding and circling words in sentences…
We read our new easy reader and found our word…
Finally, she played two mini games on Bitsboard for practice…
Day Six
{this was week 3, since we traveled over the end of week 2}
For our final day, I wanted to be sure she knew these words before moving on.
I set up a matching game {using her color by number cards and her brother’s since I still had those too! She asked to play twice and really liked this.
Roll and graph the sight words was also a popular choice. It took a bit longer than usual since she drew a picture in every single square and had a story to tell me {see more on Instagram here}. Oh, homeschooling a girl is so different!
Here’s a video clip of this activity…
She colored Color by Word picture but I didn’t get an action shot. You can see it below in the completed work display {items used in the dry erase center aren’t up here, only consumables}! I am happy to say she knows all of her words and has been finding them in books we are reading and in other places! My Kindergarten teacher heart is overflowing!
Download the FREE printables for You Can Read Unit 1 here
Purchase the You Can Read Bundle here {get access to the bonus items}
