Learning to Read with a Cootie Catcher

Do you remember Cootie Catchers from when you were a kid?   I loved them!   Here is a cootie catcher perfect for the learning to read kiddo in your life!   For our paper we used one of the sheets of Shaving Cream Painted works from yesterday.   I was inspired by Jimmie and her daughter Sprite (love their blog).   They created cootie catchers for learning history and math facts at Heart of the Matter Homeschoolers.     If they can make one for the Civil War, I bet I can make one about “Short A” words!

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Instructions on how to make your own word-learning cootie catcher:

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Using a square piece of paper, bring two ends together and pinch the inside, repeat with the other side.   Draw an “x” on your pinches.   Bring the corners in towards the “X” and fold.

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Flip the square over and dot the center.   Bring each corner into the center and fold.   Once you have all the corners in, fold it along the “white” lines or gaps to make the cootie catcher manageable.   Insert your fingers into the pockets!   You have a cootie catcher!!!

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Using your Cootie Catcher to Learn to Read:

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To write the words I flexed the Cootie Catcher and wrote the halves of the “a” first.   We then filled in the rest of the word.   The words we used are: bat, sad, ran, cap.   I wanted each word to have a different beginning and ending, and be able to match when moved so the letters would form a new word.

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We took apart the catcher and finished drawing the “a” and made the rest of the words: bad, cat, sat, pad, rap, van, can, & tap.   Optional: You can open the flaps and add sentences.

• Matt the fat rat sat on a mat.   As he sat he pat his bat.
• Gran and Dan ran to the van to get a pan.
• Rap, tap, tap, clap your lap.

Or you can write a group of similar words to practice together:

• ap, cap, gap, lap, map, nap, rap, sap, tap, clap, etc.
• at, bat, cat, hat, fat, mat, nat, pat, rat, sat, tat, chat, flat, etc.
• ad, bad, dad, had, lad, mad, pad, sad, tad, glad, brad, etc.
• an, can, Jan, fan, man, pan, nan, ran, van, gran, plan, etc.

Have fun working and learning to read with your cootie catcher!

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Here are some other learning resources that might help your youngster learn to read:

Fun Ways to learn letters!

Flip Chart for sounding out words.

Make Your Own Chalkboard to write words.

Don’t want to make your own Cootie Catcher but still want to be part of the fun?   Check out Cahootie Catcher they have several varieties and can also be found in Target.