I am amazed at how many kids …. mainly boys are learning how to read later in life now a days. It’s not just the Special Needs Kids who are learning to read late. I’ve got good news for you: Don’t give up, they can still learn to read!
These “Late Learners” have a unique challenge: wanting to read something that is their level of reader, but not full of baby pictures! While trying to teach Ian to read, I came to the heartbreaking reality that there really aren’t any good Supplements out there for older learners. All the Supplements are geared toward younger kids and have lots of graphics and big chunky drawings all over them.
So, I got busy and researched and tested. My poor kids had so many different designs and “here, try this … do you like it? Will you use it?” but in the end, they loved using the Big Kid Supplements. And what’s better …. they were fun, easy and they worked!
Ian’s first favorite and therefore the first of the Supplements we produced are the Word Fans. The Word Fans consists of 30 Word Family endings that can make over 100 different words! All you need to do is print and cut out the fans and connect with a brad. Personally, I made one fan for every Word Family and put them all in a plastic bag. At first, I put them in five different bags (a, e, i, o, u). But as Ian got better and better at making real words, I put them all in one bag and he got to pick out several Word Fans for that days “Fun Time”.
These Fans are very versatile. As your child gets older, you can add other consonants that might or might not make a word in that word family. Or you can take one of each of the consonants and each of the Word Families and secure them all into one fan. Then your child can make any kind of word or create a “non-word”. That, of course opens up another avenue to teach about words and “non-words”. While your at it, try your hand at Creative Writing using some of those non-words! There are so many ways to use these wonderful fans.