When looking for a kindergarten, first, or second grade reading activity, the first point to accomplish is to find books that you will both enjoy reading and listening to. Check with other friends or even family members that perhaps have children that are a bit older and ask them what their favorites turned out to be. When you're in the library with your child make note of the sections or types of books they seem to gravitate to. Do some quick research and see what books are rated high by professional educators.
The second grade reading level is just about that age where the child is beginning to transfer from big letters and lots of descriptive pictures, to a bit more sentence and vocabulary building. Repetition, practice and exposure to reading is always important, but at the second grade level it is really accentuated for this very reason.
Work to constantly to encourage your second grader to be able to grasp and understand the longer more complex sentences by offering a few questions for them to answer at the end of their reading time. This will give you valuable feed back as to the pace at which you are moving them forward. If you find your child getting off track or struggling, take a step back, repeat an earlier book and gain some more practice and confidence... don't move forward with a frustration level building.
It also about this age level that you want to begin to introduce some timed readings as part of your second grade reading activities. You can begin rather innocuously, by monitoring how far your give gets over a given time without them actually aware of timed reading. This block of time should be followed up by you with some general questions and getting your child to tell the story back to you. As your child progresses it is also at this age that you want to continue to work on the child's speed and their fluency in their reading. Remember keep a steady pace on their reading progress, introducing gradual levels of complexity, monitor their understanding with some simple questions and dialog, begin to work on speed with some timed reading and comprehension activities. And always make time for fun family reading and family games that require reading and vocabulary building.
Mary Joyce is a former educator, successful homeschool parent, and the primary contributor to the Homeschool-Curriculum-4u website. Please visit (http://www.homeschool-curriculum-4u.com) for a complete list of Mary's articles, resources on homeschool, ideas, and curriculum information. Also tips guides and how-to's to help you successfully teach your child at home.
