Short a Bible Reader

I’m so excited to share with you Lesson 1 of a series I’m calling Phonics by The Book! This is the first lesson in a series of lessons and focuses on a Short a Bible Reader and activities for kids. My goal is to teach beginning reader phonics skills and God’s Word at the same time!

*This is a series I originally posted YEARS ago on This Reading Mama. My goal is to revise it and add more to it. But for now, I’m just moving it to its new home here.

*Click on the green download button towards the BOTTOM of this post to download this lesson.

Before I get to the first activity, I want to give a HUGE shout out to Masaru of Christian Cliparts. He is always willing to create for the glory of God!

Short a Bible Reader: God Made It All

In this post, you’ll find:

my God Made It All reader (with a focus on short a words)
printables & activities for reinforcing short a words with blends/digraphs
printables & activities to coincide with sight words (from Fry’s first 100 Sight Word & Pre-Primer/Primer lists)
writing ideas & prompts
Bible Verse activities
A lesson outline that gives a plan for spacing out the activities over the week (note: we didn’t do all of these activities, some are just suggestions)
pictures of my son {first grade} trying it out

The routines and activities in all the lessons of the short vowel unit will be very similar in nature, if not exactly the same, to keep with consistency and to help build confidence and independence.

1. God Made it All Reader

On our first time through, I read most of the God Made It All Reader while he listened. We talked about a few words as we read such as clam, drab, mass, and mighty. He helped me read a few of the words, but mainly just wanted to listen.

On subsequent readings, he took over more of the reading. I knew that it would take a while for him to build his confidence because there are a lot of words in the text, especially when compared to the little independent readers he’s been reading, and although I knew he could read almost every word, he didn’t know that. 🙂

2. Short a Activities

a. Short a word sort with the word families -at, -and, & -ack. Most of the words chosen from this sort come directly from the God Made It All Reader. If you like this sort, these are the same kind of sorts you’ll find in Words Their Way & all their supplement books. I highly recommend these!

b. Here he is on day two color-coding the short a words by word family chunks. He got to use the new pen he got in his stocking this year. I loved these pens as a kid and had no clue they still made them!

c. Little Words activity with PLANTS

I called out the words (listed on the download) one at a time, he built them,

and was excited to discover the “secret” word, used by all the letters, on his own at the end: PLANTS.

d. We went on a word hunt with the short a word sort.

First, I pulled out all the words from the sort that are in the God Made It All Reader and we sorted them by pattern.

Then, as we read through the book, I placed certain words above each page and he found them and circled them throughout the text. (I placed the reader in plastic sleeve protectors.)

e. Blind Sort: I set up the head words from the sort: CAT, AND & BLACK. I held the stack of words so he could not see them and called each one out. His job was to visualize the word and point to the column where it belonged. Then, I placed the word in the column so he could check it.

3. Sight Words

You can find a list of sight words for the lesson on the very first page of the God Made It All Reader and word cards in the Word-Wac-Woe activity.

For the week, these are the words I chose to teach: day, night, with, and them. That doesn’t necessarily mean those are the words you must teach your child. Find 2-5 words on the word list that your child doesn’t know and focus in on those.

Secret Sentence: Unscramble the sight words to find the secret sentence

Roll & Write a Sentence: Roll 2 dice, add the sum, then use the number code to fill in the sentence. (2 pages in download)

Word-Wac-Woe : (strategy resembles Tic-Tac-Toe)

Display and read 15-20 of the sight word cards,

jot them down on your game board (mine on left, his on right),

shuffle the cards and place them face-down in a pile. Players take turns reading the sight word and crossing them off their game boards. Directions are in the download as well.

Because I used this lesson mainly for short a words and sight words, we did not do most of the writing and Bible Verse portions, but please feel free to use.

4. Writing

Writing Prompt: What is your favorite thing that God made? Why?

Dictated Sentence: God made the cat and ant to go on land. I read the sentence aloud several times and ALuv wrote it down with very little help from me. (It reviews short a words as well as sight words.)