Well – did you see the Super Blood Moon last night? We did – and it was awesome. And today we are celebrating little Ben’s third birthday! Good grief with all this excitement I can barely sit still to get this post out to you … but I really want to, so I will.

Exciting news around these parts – Sam is learning to read! I had every intention of waiting a little longer since he is only 5, but he is pumped and eager … and ready. Knowing his letters and their sounds he is all set!

I talk all about how we introduce letters, and why we do it that way, in this post on introducing letters. You are welcome to pop on over and read it and then come back. I will wait for you. I can be very patient in situations like this.

Back already? Boy you were quick! Or Geez that took awhile! {whichever applies}

So this month we have been working on the first chunk of the letters: s, a, t, i, p, and n. We did lots of games with matching the upper and lowercase and playing with the sounds. Once Sam really, really knew those letters we started blending them into words families (-at family, -ap, -it, etc.)

We played around a lot together with these blends and then I made some quiet bins for Sam to practice on his own.

He really liked these 3 Learn to Read Quiet Bins, so I thought I would share them with you. For each bin I only used the letter s, a, t, i, p, n for now. We will add in more as we move onto to the next chunk of letters.

Popsicle stick clothespin blending: This is an idea we have used before when we were playing with learning family and friends names. I wrote the word families on popsicle sticks, and the matching letters on the clothespins. When Sam clipped the matching letters on he said the sound as he clipped, blending them together /s/a/t/.

Velcro blending. I wrote the word families on paper plates. For the first letter I left a Velcro space. Then I wrote the letters that would fit in that space to make a word on cardboard and Velcroed them to the bottom of the page. Sam would say the word sounding out each sound as he added the Velcro letter. {My computer is telling me ‘Velcroed’ is not a word … and now I have looked at it so long I am not even sure Velcro is a word …. So if this makes no sense at all, please excuse me – I blame the super blood moon)

Car blending. In this quiet bin I taped a piece of electrical tape to the bottom to make a road. I then added cut up letters and a dump truck. Sam would build a word family word along the road and as he drove it he would pick up the first letter and make the sound until he hit the second letter and then hold that sound until he reached the last sound. I had the words on little cards to help him build them independently.

These bins were great practice for him all on his own to play with this new skill he is working on. And like everything, we will work on it slow and steady.

At least like most things in our lives – just not chickens. That we do completely differently — lots and fast.

Happy Monday friends!

Please check out my book on Educational Quiet Bins if you haven’t yet. Perfect for little ones between 2 – 6 years old.