While the kids are enjoying a bit of a summer break I am trying to get a few goodies prepared for our new learning year.

My son is desperate to read.  So in line with his strong desire to read I thought I would set up a Letters and Sounds folder for him.  The idea is that I will include one or two activities in the folder for him and then as he completes them I will rotate the activities.  I am trying to get as much of the laminating and cutting etc done now so that the cards and pages are ready and I can just slot them into the folder as I need to.  I thought I would divide the activities that I am preparing for his folder into the ones that are FREE to download and the ones that are part of a premium package.   So all the activities that I am including in this blog post are the FREE pages and I will do another separate blog post later on in the week showing which Premium pages I also planning on using.

I am starting off with this alphabet mat.

I have laminate it and I am going to stick it onto his folder so that no matter what activity he is doing he can always refer back to it if he needs it.

He already learnt most of his Upper case letters (capital letters) when we did the penguin folder earlier on in the year but I like redoing basic letter activities a number of times with the kids to make sure we have not missed anything.  So I am including this Ice-cream Upper and Lower case matching activity for him.

My son has used these road letters in the past and loved them so I am going to reuse them again.  I printed ours so that there were 4 letters on each page and then I laminated them so he can trace over the letters with his “magic pens” (white board marker pens).

I have also laminate these What’s in the box cards.  I plan to just use a few of these at a time.  The phase 2 cards contain lots of really simple words which will be great for little ones just starting to read basic 3 letter words (CVC words).  My daughter has already been using these cards to teach her toys how to read (she has a very clever pooh bear).

And I really like these missing sound cards (phase 2).  Great for using with a white board marker.

And lastly I am planning on using these CVC word frame cards a bit later on in the year.  I really like the fact that the block for each letter indicates to the kids if it is a tall, short or tail letter.  I know my daughter would have found these useful when she was just beginning to write.

I really like this idea and fingers crossed my son will enjoy using his letter and sound folder.