This easy poetry activity with simple rhymes will encourage children to spot rhyming patterns. Writing and cutting skills are also a focus.

When progressing to more difficult texts, writing begins to replace images and children must rely more on creating their own mental images of what is happening in a story. The more we encourage this skill in the early years, the easier it will be for children to do this independently as they begin to graduate to higher level texts.

Consonant blends appear at the beginning of words and consist of 2 consonants whose phonetic sounds blend together to create one sound. Teaching consonant blends can be tricky!

Boost reading and spelling skills with CVC word family towers. Use building blocks to make towers of rhyming words and learn to identify common word families.

Making CVC words is the first step in blending phonetic sounds. This Melissa & Doug product is great because it makes sounding-out CVC words fun and easy.

High frequency or sight words are the words that appear the most often in written text. They need to be practised frequently. Repetition can be dull, so make it a game to keep it fun and interesting.