Alphabet Bingo

Alphabet Bingo is a fun game that can reinforce letter names.

Aak! I've been working on my dissertation day and night, leaving little time to update and add new stuff. I'm doing well now and feeling good about where I'm at - only a few more weeks until I'm all done!!

But back to the interesting stuff - we were at a friends house for a birthday party the other day and we found a game of alphabet bingo stuffed among all the other toys. Isadora and I played a couple games and she seemed to really enjoy it (of course I'm sure it had nothing to do with me saying, "Wow Isadora, isn't this alphabet bingo a FUN game!? This is so much FUN!")

We got home and I looked up the game on Amazon, but it was fairly expensive for just a bunch of printouts. I decided that there must be something on the internet, and indeed there was! Here is the link to the webpage where I got it. I printed out two copies of the boards, cutting up one and then pasting the whole boards down to some construction paper. This is more work than I usually do for a literacy activity, but I figured that it's a game that we will be returning to often, so it's worth the 15 minutes I spent cutting and pasting. Then I just turned the letter cards over, call out the letter name, and we put coins over the letters that we each got. Isadora actually prefers to use poker chips, so we are using those now. There are supposed to be rules to filling in four in a row, or two at each side in order to win, but right now we are just filling up the boards.

*It also has uppercase and lowercase, something that I think is great. Once Isadora has mastered her uppercase, we will move to the lowercase.

Why phonics?

What do you think has the biggest impact on your child's ability to read? Take a look at the list and see if you can find the top two...

• The ability to tell you the sounds in words (like sun begins with an 's')
• Knowledge of letter names
• Kindergarten teachers' prediction of reading success in first grade
• Performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (a measure of oral English Vocabulary)
• Parents' occupational status
• Library membership
• Number of books the child owns
• Amount that parent reads to their child
• Gender

All you Freakonomics readers probably guessed the amount that parents read to their children, or the number of books the child owns, but they're both wrong. Give up? They're already in order! A study by Share, Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews back in 1984 found that the top two factors that have the biggest impact on your childs ability to read is their PHONEME SEGMENTATION ABILITY (or their ability to tell you the first sound in the word sun) and their knowledge of letter names.
What does this mean for you and your child? PHONICS, PHONICS, PHONICS!! And while reading aloud to your child is wonderful, it is not enough to teach them to read.