A Favorite Literacy Activity

I thought I'd share one of the Montessori-inspired reading activities my first-grader has enjoyed. I cut up card stock and wrote one short action word per card such as: jump, skip, hop, smile, run, dance, etc. Then I folded each in half and put them in a wide-mouth jar on the shelf. We take the jar out, she selects one card and attempts to read it and then do what the card says. She loves it!

Another version would be to write a short sentence, such as "Find a dish" or other instruction to do something. Later, you could come up with even more complicated sentences, adding other parts of speech such as adjectives.

Early readers can find reading individual short words and sentences less intimidating than trying to read a page with several sentences or a whole workbook page.