Although I have no intention of homeschooling Riley, I do have several learning goals for her before she officially starts school.  I want to teach her to read and write her alphabet, her name and our phone number so as to be better prepared for kindergarten.

We're busy learning letter sounds, but I soon realized that I needed a fun and easy way to enrich Riley's phonics skills.  As always, Educational Insights was right there with a terrific toy to teach beginning reading fundamentals.  Keep reading to learn more about the Teaching Tiles Early Learning System!

Use a Hands-On Approach to Teach Phonics Skills

The Beginning Reading Center is a hands-on approach to developing beginning reading  and phonics skills, such as letter-sound relationships, vocabulary, comprehension, spelling and sentence formation.  Young learners practice these important early skills using a combination of fun manipulative materials - large, chunky tiles, a "work" tray and colorful, self-checking activity cards.

• 100 plastic tiles
• 26 lowercase letter tiles
• 38 picture tiles
• 36 word tiles
• Work tray
• 50 self-checking activity cards
• Teacher's guide

The tile borders are color-coded to go with the activity cards, enabling students to easily determine the tiles necessary for the task.  For example, all letter tiles and the cards with which they are used have blue borders.  The tiles, tray and activity cards in your Beginning Reading Center make a motivating learning center activity.  You can even use your Beginning Reading Center for teacher-directed activities with individuals or small groups.

Fun Activities to Reinforce Beginning Phonics Skills

Listen and Find

Lay an assortment of picture tiles on a table.  Say a clue about a picture, and have your child find a corresponding tile.  Some ideas include: "Find a picture that begins with a 'b'." or "Find a picture that has a short 'a' in its name."

Rebus Sentences

Let your child combine the picture tiles and word tiles to create simple rebus sentences.  Then have them read their sentences to back to you.

Word-Building Challenge

Use the letter tiles to reinforce spelling and phonics skills.  Have your child form words with the tiles while giving them criteria like: "Make a word that rhymes with 'hen'." or "Make a word that ends in 't'."

I loved using the Teaching Tiles Early Learning System with Riley.  There were so many engaging phonics skills activities included which really helped capture her attention.  Having all of the colorful and coordinated tiles coupled with the challenging activity cards also made for wonderful learning manipulatives.  Of course, the hardest part for us is teaching the vowel sounds, but I've found that playing the Listen and Find game has helped immensely.  She's almost got it!

Teaching my child to read and develop a love of books is one of the best gifts I can impart to her.  Thankfully, the Teaching Tiles Early Learning System Beginning Reading Center is making this daunting task much easier than it was before.  I just know that before too long, my daughter will be a brand new reader!