Teaching Simple Sentences when Learning to Read

Now that your child can read some sight words, blend some sounds into words, and knows many different letter sounds, it’s time to start some reading with simple sentences. For this, we used the Snap Words flashcards for sight words plus a bunch of pictures. The pictures can be things that you find on the internet or pictures of your child. We love using pictures of our own child, and it’s so easy to print these right from your phone these days.

Teach Simple Sentences with Sentence Stems

Our first sentence was “I ….” or “I can …”. We then took pictures of things our little ones could do. For example, run, jump, dance, sing, kick, eat, sleep, brush teeth, etc. Next, we put out the Snap Words sight word cards for I and Can and one picture. We had out little one start reading these simple sentences. “I can run, I can jump, I can dance”, etc just by changing the ending picture.

These simple sentence stems prepare your child for reading books designed for early readers. Many of these first books follow a simple pattern. They have one basic sentence stem used one each page of the book. The last word of the sentence changes, but relies heavily on the picture to support your child with reading this word. As your child grows as a reader, the sentence stems grow longer, they may vary or use different sentence stems, and the word or words that change move from the end of the sentence to other positions within the sentence.

Supporting Your Reader with Simple Sentence Stems

If your reader needs some help with pointing at the words, we would add a small toy under each word. Then have our reader touch the toy under each word as the word was read. This could then translate into a dot under each word when the sentence was written on a piece of paper. Here you are encouraging your little one to read each word of the text. This becomes so important when they start reading more sentences.

By pointing at the words in the sentence, you encourage your child to pay attention to each word. This helps to ensure that your child doesn’t just memorize the pattern, but actually looks at the words. Now, your child may memorize the pattern in the beginning, this is normal. But you also want them to focus on the words so that they commit these words to their bank of words they can read by sight.

Change the Pronoun in Simple Sentences

After I can sentences, we usually introduced we can sentences. For we can, you can use the same pictures of your little one or make new pictures of your little one doing the action with another person or two. Then vary “I can” and “We can” sentences to encourage your little one to pay attention to the words.

As the pronoun changes, your little one is no longer able to just memorize the sentence stem. Now they need to look at the words to read the correct pronoun. If this is difficult for your reader, try the suggestion above to add toys below each word. This will encourage more focus on the words and not just the pattern.

Once your little reader is more comfortable between the pronoun change, you can begin to change both the pronoun and verb in each sentence. For this, your little one will need to have a few more sight words to practice.

Simple Sentences – Change the Pronoun and/or Verb

Next, we would add the sight words like and see to the mix. For both, you can take pictures of things your little one likes – apples, bananas, pool, balls, blocks, legos, dolls, etc. Now you can mix and match 4 different sentences to help your reader focus on the words in addition to the pictures. “I see”, “We see”, “I like”, and “We like.” Be sure to continue to mix in “I can” and “We can” too.

This is a great time to add a word under each picture too. You can type and print out the words to glue onto the picture, glue a handwritten paper to the top or bottom, or even write the word at the bottom of each picture. Not only will this help you to remember each picture’s word, but it will help your child get used to seeing words when they use picture supports.

Encourage your Child to Sound of Words in Simple Sentences

Your child might even be able to begin to sound out some of these words. When your child knows many of the letters and their most common sound, they are ready to begin to apply these new phonics skills to read simple words. Simple words are mostly 3 letter words with a short vowel sound. Some great examples to begin with include run, hop, jog, kick, cup, dog, cat, hat, box, fox, ham, jet, pen, kit, fin, pin, win, bed, tub. There are so many more words you can choose. If you need more words, think about words that rhyme with those in the list here.

As your child grows in their skills, you can also try using only the written word without the picture cues. This will encourage your child to use their phonics skills to sound out the word. This is a big step for readers, so it may take some practice before they are ready for sentences without pictures. With your help, they will get there. By the end of kindergarten, many children are able to read sentences by sounding out words, reading sight words, and using picture supports.

Make Longer Sentences

As your reader learns more sight words, you can make more sentences to try out. Also, as your reader becomes more successful in sounding out words, you can add some three letter short vowel words without pictures into the sentences as well. “I see a big ______” or “We like red _____” or “We see the cat and _____.” These sentences become incredibly important to have your reader pointing to each word as they read so they don’t miss little words in the sentence. So again, add a small toy under each word card or picture, or add a dot under each written word on a piece of paper to prompt your little one to follow along with a finger when reading.

With longer sentences comes the need to read more sight words. Some great words to help your child to learn include the, to, go, have, and, a, play, is, are. These words can provide you many new sentences to add to your child’s reading. As your child becomes comfortable with these words, try creating two sentences for your child to read. For example, “I go to the store. I see an apple” or “I like to play. We play tag.” You can slowly grow the length of text your child reads each time.

Begin to Read Books

We love when we can transfer our reading skills into actual physical books. So many places have easy readers for your child to practice. Most of these books will be called Level 1 books, pre-readers, or Guided Reading Level A or B books. These are the introduction level books for new readers and most of the books are very similar with picture support and simple repetitive sentences. You can also check out our store for easy readers in both English and Spanish.

Make Your Own Books

Our favorite books to read with our children are the books we make together. Not only do these become our children’s favorite books to read, but they are fun to make too! We brainstorm and write the book with our little reader. Then our child can draw, find or even take pictures to add to their book.

Materials for Making Books

There are no set materials needed to make a book. Of course, you can purchase little books or journals to make books, but you can also use supplies you have around your house. You can design these on your computer or make them by hand. We like to use construction paper or card stock, but you could also make books out of copy paper too.

Books can be made in a variety of sizes. You can make a full sheet of paper book, however, we find these too big. You can also cut paper in half and make books this size. This is a great size if you want your little one to write their own sentences as they tend to need more space. We prefer when the paper is cut into 1/4ths or even 1/6ths. This makes the book a good size for little hands. We have also 3″x5″ index cards to make books.

If you choose to make the books on paper, you will also want printed pictures and coloring supplies. You child can glue the pictures and sentences onto the pages, you could write the sentences right on the pages, or even draw the pictures for each sentence. So many different ways to create the books.

How to Write Your Own Simple Books

When making your own books, you start by deciding on a simple sentence stem to use. For the youngest readers, choose one sentence stem with one or two words only. Use this same sentence stem on each page of the book, only changing the final word of the sentence. For younger readers, you may only include 2 -3 pages in the beginning. As your child becomes more comfortable reading, you can add more pages to the book. There really is no limit to how many pages your books can have, but we find about 10 is a good number.

As your child grows as a reader, you can begin to make longer books. To do this, your reader can write longer sentences, but keep the same sentence stem for each page. You can also add two or three different sentence stems to each page of your book or use different sentence stems throughout the book. Another way to improve your child’s reading skills, you can start to add in more simple short words to sound out.

Once you have the pages created, be sure to create a cover too! For your cover, you can use just the simple sentence stem or you can change it up to the topic of the book. It’s okay if the title is a little more difficult for your child to read, but it’s also okay to keep it simple. Then add a picture or picture collage on the cover. Be sure to add the author too. How exciting to see your child’s name as the author of a book!

How to Bind Your Simple Books

Once you have created the pages on the book, there are lots of ways you can bind your books. You can simply staple the pages together. Try out a few different ways to staple the books and see which way your child prefers. We have had luck stapling just the top corner diagonally, but you can also staple the top and bottom of the pages.

You can also punch holes in the side of the pages using a hole puncher. Then you could use basic metal rings to bind the books. These are nice if you like to make longer books or keep all your books together.

We also have placed the pages into Ziploc bags and taped the bags together. These make the books a little more durable for little hands. Your child’s work will be better protected from spills, tears, and little siblings too. Just place two pages back to back inside each Ziploc bag. Add as many Ziploc bags as you need until each page is inside a bag. Then staple or tape the pages together on the side or top, depending on how you would like your book to turn.

For a little more fancy protection, you could laminate each page or two pages back to back. If you don’t have a laminator, clear contact paper works well for laminating the pages. Then you can staple the book pages together to create a well protected book for your little reader.

Purchase Easy Readers

We have a few easy readers that we have loved with our children. Raz Kids is a great program, which most school districts pay for, full of easy readers for young learners. These books can be accessed via any device that connects to the internet. Child can listen to the story, read the story with the ability to hear a word, and even take short quizzes on the story.

We have loved Scholastics First Little Readers with our children. These are easy books to read and your child has a book to hold in their hand. A few examples include:

1. Scholastic’s First Little Readers Level A
2. Scholastic’s Phonics Readers Level A – D
3. Guided Science Readers by Scholastic A – D

No matter what you choose, getting books in your child’s hands help to improve their reading skills. Be sure to check out your local library for easy readers too! Most librarians can assist you with helping to support your child’s beginning reading and finding just the right books.

Don’t miss the next post in the series detailing accuracy strategies and how to use them. These help your child to become an independent reader. If you enjoyed this post, drop of us comment below. We’d love to hear about your favorite books and simple sentences to use with your children. For more parenting tips, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter below.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.