I am pumped to post the second free lesson of Reading the Alphabet, my preschool reading curriculum!
My preschooler is doing very well with the lessons we’ve done thus far and I’m amazed at the amount of enthusiasm he has for learning new words and applying his new phonological awareness skills!
You can purchase our Reading the Alphabet Bundle Pack, stream-lined for easy downloading! It also features bonus material that you can’t find in this free version!
Reading the Alphabet: Letter F
I’ve included a 5-Day lesson plan for letter Ff. On each day, have four activities you can do. You are welcome to do more or less. (I’ve only included four because that’s all NJoy can handle right now.)
Directions for each activity are either on the lesson plan outline or on the activity printable itself. EACH lesson from this curriculum will have similar activities and the lessons are designed to be taught in this order because they build on one another.
LETTER F READING ACTIVITIES
Letter Ff Reader: the focus is on applying the /f/ sound and practice reading the sight word the.
Pocket Chart Ff Reader: There’s also a pocket chart version of the reader to change things up a bit. You can use the black and white or colored Ff picture cards to go with the pocket chart reader. Further directions are on the lesson plan.
SIGHT WORD: THE
THE Sight Word Song: I firmly believe that learning something through song helps memory work stick like nothing else. For example, 22 years ago (in the 7th grade) I learned a song that listed every preposition in alphabetical order…and I can STILL sing it! So, I really wanted to find a song to help NJoy remember each of his sight words in this curriculum. There were so many tunes to pick from, but I went with Mary Had a Little Lamb. You’ll find it in each lesson (with words that have more than one letter).
Sight Word Poke Page: My kiddos totally loved Erica’s poke pages (like the one in this lesson), so I made some for each sight word with permission.
Sight Word Maze (these are similar to Carisa’s alphabet mazes and I also have permission to “copy” her.)
Sight Word Search– find the on each row
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS ACTIVITIES
Sorting F and T Pictures by Initial Sound in the Pocket Chart: Using T pictures from Lesson 1
Syllable Count and Clip- This printable has been updated since the picture was taken, but directions are on the updated printable and it works in a similar fashion as the activity you see above.
Cut & Paste Rhyming Activity (with fan): I cut these out before we do this activity as he’s not quite there with his scissor skills, yet.
LETTER F PRINT AWARENESS ACTIVITIES
Fish Print Awareness: I drew the fish, he drew the bubbles. You can make your fish any way you wish-paint, stamp, etc. If you need further directions, you can view my guest post; which gives you a step-by-step guide on how to do this activity.
F is for FRONT of Book: Each time we read a book together, I made a big deal about the front of the book, showing it and saying, “This is the FRONT of the book and FRONT starts with the /f/ sound!” There’s no printable for this activity. We also reviewed that the front of the book has the title (from Lesson 1).
LETTER F FINE MOTOR/WRITING
F is for Fish Tracing Page- this is placed in his Handwriting Notebook so he can do it again any time he’d like
Cutting Practice & Pattern Cards: This activity is a 2 for 1 (I love 2 for 1’s)! The child cuts apart the strips,
then works on extending patterns with the cards. I start the pattern, he finishes to the end of the sentence strip. He’s almost reached the point that he can create the patterns with no assistance, but not quite yet.
Below are Carisa’s Handwriting pages from her Raising Rock Stars Preschool. They are AWESOME!! (Link is on the lesson plan.)
Tracing Letter Ff in his Handwriting Notebook
More Ff Tracing- he really likes to “trace” the pictures, too!
LETTER F MATH ACTIVITIES
Letter Ff Grid: Roll the die, count the dots, and place that many manipulatives on the grid. We used foam 3-D shape manipulatives (because foam starts with f) that I found in the $1 bin at Target. I first saw these grids on PreKinders.
Football Numbers: pick a number card, read the number, and dot the number (there are 2 versions on the download: #1-10 & #10-20)
We used a couple of printables from Erica’s Letter F activities ( link is on the download) like this one: placing stickers on the F is for Fish page.
At the end of the week, we sang the sight word song one more time and placed the new sight word on his sentence strip word wall.
All of the Free activities original to This Reading Mama can be found by clicking below:
Enjoy teaching!
~Becky
Shonda Knowlton says
August 31, 2012 at 12:23 pmI love your lessons! I will be using this with my son next year I think so I’m saving all of them now.
Lulu says
September 3, 2012 at 11:38 pmLoving the printables- so funny that I discovered your blog JUST before you started releasing them. I plan to use them with my older son next year as well but am saving them now so that I can work on corrosponding activities and plans.
Would love to hear your advice on activities that help dexterity for holding pencil/pen and also scissors. My older son will be 3 in December and while he has a good grip on a pencil or marker he really struggles with scissors.
Best of luck with the rest of your curriculum.
Christy says
November 11, 2012 at 7:38 pmI’m anxious to try the “the” song. My son has been picking up alot of sight words, but “the”has been difficult.
thisreadingmama says
November 11, 2012 at 7:58 pmLet me know if it helps! 🙂
Christy says
December 27, 2012 at 2:44 pmWell, I decided to start by doing your turkey/thanksgiving activity. I reviewed how to make the “th” sound, and then we did the activity…probably 6 times in a week. He loved it! Having mastered the activity, he not only went from never using the correct “th” sound to using it over 50% of the time, but he could easily identify the word “the” in any context. So, we never got to the song, but we are really enjoying your resources!
thisreadingmama says
December 27, 2012 at 3:25 pmSo glad to hear!! 🙂
Nicki says
May 29, 2013 at 11:58 amlove love love, thank you. I’ve been trying to come up with fun, creative ways to teach my child sight words. This is very helpful!
Kristen says
June 14, 2013 at 9:52 pmThe link doesn’t work on the fish print awareness. Also I can’t find the Tt card before the T words, so when we sort F and T words this week….thanks for the program, two weeks in we love it!
Amy H. Walker (@seamstostreams) says
June 26, 2013 at 4:16 pmSo thankful for this resource! Thanks for sharing all this for free. I was an ESL teacher in elementary school and worked very closely with our literacy teachers and recognize the EXCELLENT quality. I’m loving the balanced approach and supplementing with some word family and sight word stuff that I have. This makes my life SO much easier. THANK YOU!!!!!
thisreadingmama says
June 26, 2013 at 10:55 pmYou’re so welcome! Thank you for the kind comments.
Tausha Beard says
July 23, 2013 at 4:53 pmI’m trying to download your reading the alpahbet free lesson but when I download it doesn’t pull up, it shows in a foreign lanuage, can you tell me what program I need to be able to open and print out your downloads?
please email me and let me know
thisreadingmama says
July 24, 2013 at 9:18 pmI don’t really know what to tell you except that I used Adobe to create the PDF, so make sure you have the latest version of that. Also make sure you have a program to unzip files.
Emily says
September 12, 2013 at 2:01 pmAbsolutely loving your curriculum you’ve done here. Excellent. I add in a music lesson everyday with my son (former music teacher here!). For “fish”, we read the book “Swimmy” by Leo Lionni, and listened to Saint-Saens “Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium.” We acted out the animals Swimmy finds in the sea. There’s so much fun to be had with that piece!
Cari @ReachForTheStarBerries says
September 15, 2013 at 1:18 amI’m preparing the work for us for this coming week and noticed the same thing the precious poster Kristin did… “Also I can’t find the Tt card before the T words, so when we sort F and T words this week”
Do you happen to have a page 1 for the Letter Tt Cards for Lesson 1? This week for Letter Ff there are 2 pages, 1 with the Ff card and directions and the other page with the picture cards.
We are REALLY loving this curriculum. My daughter was SOOO excited when she finished reading The Letter Tt Book. She couldn’t believe that she was able to read a book all by herself! It was wonderful to watch her read it to her little sister.
Thanks!
Cari
thisreadingmama says
September 15, 2013 at 6:04 amI’m so sorry about that! I just fixed it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. 🙂
Cari @ReachForTheStarBerries says
September 16, 2013 at 12:27 pmWonderful!!! Thanks again!
thisreadingmama says
September 16, 2013 at 2:40 pmYou’re so welcome!
Aubrey says
November 9, 2013 at 3:39 pmThis looks great! But, I’m not able to find the handwriting pages from Raising Rockstars Preschool. The links in both this post and in the lesson plans simply take me to the RRSP website, and I cannot find the handwriting pages on that site! Can you help?
thisreadingmama says
November 9, 2013 at 3:44 pmYou have to scroll down on that link. Look for the blue rectangle box. It has each letter in the box. Click on each letter and it will download the lesson for each letter.
JayNine says
April 25, 2014 at 5:26 pmOk. I’m finally getting around to picking up where we left off… I was wondering if there was anywhere I could get any of these available Lesson letter printables via a PDF FILE? For now (& until I can afford a new one) we’ve only got aniPad for downloads and prints. Zip Files cannot be printed this way. Just curious! If there isn’t no worries, we’re still along for the ride 😀
thisreadingmama says
April 27, 2014 at 6:36 amI just sent you a reply via email. 🙂
Sarah says
November 16, 2014 at 5:05 pmI would love to print and use your AMAZING resources to teach my 3 year old who is showing such an eagerness about learning to read!! As a former first grade teacher I can say WOW at the level of depth in this curriculum. Are PDF files available? I’m having trouble downloading using Safari from my Apple devices. Thanks so much!!
Yael says
February 9, 2015 at 10:51 amlesson #1 didn’t work, lesson #2 did!!
WL says
February 24, 2016 at 10:19 pmHi Becky, thank you for these resources, they are great!
Unfortunately I can’t download the zip files. Are the PDFs available? Thanks!
thisreadingmama says
February 25, 2016 at 6:24 amThe only thing that comes in PDF is the bundle pack, which is in my shop. Maybe one day, I’ll go back and create PDFs with all these, but that’s too much work for my plate right now. Do you have a way to unzip files? There are instructions at TpT that might help you–> https://support.teacherspayteachers.com/What-a-ZIP-file-c46-a88.html?aref=jpi09qph
Anthea says
March 10, 2016 at 12:55 amThank so much for the effort in getting these done! There is error in the link for download in the Letter F. Is there any other link to download? Thanks!
thisreadingmama says
March 16, 2016 at 10:05 amIt worked for me when I tried it. Have you been able to get it to work, maybe using a different internet browser? Also, it is a zip file, so you need a way to unzip it.
Edem says
July 14, 2016 at 5:28 amHello!I’m a newbie homeschool mom from the Philippines and I find your resources very helpful.Unfortunately the Letter F would not download whatever browser I use.I ‘m hoping the you could check the link if you have time. 🙂
thisreadingmama says
January 11, 2017 at 5:37 amI’m not sure what to tell you. It worked for me.
Shosho says
April 5, 2016 at 6:43 amThey really amazing I love them ‘thanks alot
jbohlander says
June 4, 2016 at 7:27 pmStumbled across this curriculum…it’s just what I needed to help my daughter move to the next step after learning the alphabet (& sounds). She’s a sponge for learning and loves doing school, I just wasn’t sure how to move forward! We’ve just finished the first week…she loved having her own book! And I’ve looked ahead to the lessons down the road and am excited to see how she does as the books get more words and activities get a little more complex.
I was wondering if you have a file with the letter squares – from the Tcards or Fcards, etc?
I want to print them in cardstock too, but don’t want to use a whole page of cardstock for instructions and one card. Just having those letters all in one file to print off would be wonderful!
Erma says
January 10, 2017 at 10:34 pmso good. really love all of them! Thank you for sharing
thisreadingmama says
January 11, 2017 at 5:36 amYou’re welcome! 🙂
Mallory Latini says
January 10, 2018 at 5:02 pmFor the cut and rhyme page, your latest images include crayon to rhyme with fan. Are all the pictures supposed to rhyme or do we just pronounce it differently than you?
thisreadingmama says
January 11, 2018 at 5:48 amI think it’s “tan” instead of crayon.