Reading Incentive Program for Kids BOOK IT!

BOOK IT! is a free reading incentive program for kids in grades K-6. You can sign up for BOOK IT! for the 2012-2013 school year.  Just go here and submit the online form.  According to the site "the 2012 enrollment deadline is September 1st., however, we will continue to accept enrollment requests on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last."



The site also offers a bunch of free printables to help your pre-reader.  To check these out just go here.

More about the BOOK IT! kids reading program:

• The BOOK IT! kids reading program is a six-month reading incentive program implemented in K-6 classrooms October through March each year.
• You set monthly reading goals for each child in the class.  You can use it for your home school students.
• As soon as a monthly reading goal has been met, you present the child with a reading award certificate.
• The child takes the certificate to a Pizza Hut® restaurant, where he or she is congratulated by the manager or team and given a free, one-topping Personal Pan Pizza®. There is no purchase necessary and the pizza can be taken to go. On the first visit, the child will also receive a cool, new BOOK IT! Passport and sticker.
• On each subsequent visit, the child is again congratulated and given another Personal Pan Pizza and a sticker to add to their BOOK IT! Passport.

  
  
  
  Check out how we used BOOK IT!  during this school year.  Have you participated in BOOK IT!  How did you like it?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

Sight Words Bingo

My son has hit a little bump and I needed to find something fun to help him with his reading.  I found this Sight Words Bingo.  You can print out ten variations of the card and a word list. I am hoping after playing that it will do the trick. I think the Bingo reward will be an M&M or a small cookie.

Free Printable Letters from Leapfrog

Leap Frog has free printable letters to color from their popular Letter Factory DVD.  We love this DVD and the Talking Words Factory.

Starfall is great! Now what?

If you don't know about Starfall and you have a pre-reader/ early reader then you really need to check it out.  In fact Homeschool.com recognized Starfall as one of their top five educational websites.We've been using starfall for over a year now and I find it to be an awesome FREE resource for teaching kids to read and reinforcing phonics skills.  I finally bit the bullet and even bought the extension.  I'm glad I did.  It is loaded with all kinds of goodies including math, stories, poems, nursery rhymes and more.  Since I have a new baby this is a great way for me to have my kids (ages 3 and almost 5) do something educational as I care for the baby.

My daughter is in the second grade book of hooked on phonics and I have been wondering about other programs that have reading in them since my daughter is pretty much past the starfall reading.  (It is still great reinforcement for her though and she does it while my 3 year old happily observes.)  Today I found Click N Read Phonics.  The program states that it is "designed for children as young as 4 years old and teaches the complete K-3rd grade phonics curriculum taught at USA public schools."  It is not free like starfall but it looks pretty reasonable and you can test out 4 of the lessons.  (2 of these lessons are for Click N Spell.)  My daughter tested a couple today and she was totally engaged.  For example, in the spelling lesson it said a word, said it in a sentence, showed how it was spelled and then my daughter had to type out the word.  Then it said the word for a second time (without showing the word this time) and my daughter had to type it out again.  Fantastic!

I love that there are no CD ROMS to use and nothing to install.  You can try out the four lessons with the click of a button.

I'm also pleased to see that it has a bunch of awards.  These include the Parenting Media Award and the Practical Homeschooling i-learn awards.



Please share in the comment section what you have used as the next step after starfall or to coincide with it.

Here's what the company has to say...

"ClickN KIDS, Inc, an Agoura Hills, CA based firm that develops online educational software, has introduced ClickN READ Phonics. ClickN READ Phonics contains 100 precisely sequenced, research based lessons designed by nationally recognized research professor Dr. J. Ron Nelson. The result is a beginning reading program that is beyond compare and has redefined computer based instruction. It is the first of it's kind to simulate live instruction. Each lesson is taught by ClickN KID, a goofy and lovable “Dog of the future.” ClickN KID helps children gently through a learning journey of systematic lessons set in colorful, futuristic classrooms. Each lesson contains four engaging learning environments that progressively teach alphabetic understanding, phonemic awareness, decoding, and word recognition."

Hooked on Phonics Game

Yesterday I created a new reading game to help my daughter work on her Hooked on Phonics.  First we made these cards. Go here to create your own cards with the same look.  I made about 4 different pages, cut them out and laminated them with our own little laminator.

Next I printed and laminated a game board.  There are tons of them out there.  Here are a few examples:

Car Race Board
Fall Game Board
Bees and honeycomb printable board game

We used a penny and a nickel as our game pieces and stacked the cards face down.

Here is how we played.

- On your turn grab the top card and read it.  Roll a die and move your piece.

Pretty simple right?  But it worked.  My daughter hasn't been very cooperative reading her words out of her workbook lately but since it was part of a reading game she had no problem with it. By the way my daughter is 4.5 and is working out of the first grade hooked on phonics books.  I've been slowing down with her lately because she has shown some resistance and I don't want her to have a negative experience.