I love homemade learn-to-read resources. This is a throw-back from my teaching days. I had seen wheels like this in our reading curriculum (don’t ask me what it was – it was over a decade ago). Basically, the concept of the wheel is that one letter is stationary and your child can rotate the wheels to create a new word or blend of a word. We made our own reading wheel with the help of two different sizes of cups, a button and needle and thread.
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How to make your own Learn-to-Read Wheel:
- We used a cereal bowl to trace a medium sized circle
- The kids cups made a great small circle.
- Make an extra small circle and cut it in half, then chop off the ends to make a tab.
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Steps in creation:
- You want to poke a hole through the center of both circles.
- Using the button and the tab, create a sandwich of the pieces. So that the circle “wheels” are both able to move, but the tab stays stationary.
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Labeling the Reading Wheel with Consonants and Vowels:
We made different wheels with different vowels in the center or with different beginning/ending letters. You can also use letter blends to create the wheels.
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Do you have a favorite homemade learning resource? Share it in the comments!
Great idea!
I love this idea! We are on the lookout for fun learning activities to do this week. My daughters have fall break and like to keep busy!
Wow- that is so so creative!!! Honestly you are such a fab mom for coming up with this stuff!
Fantastic tutorial! I’ll be sharing this post with some friends with little ones!
What a neat idea! My 5yo will love this!
Sometimes the homemade things are the best!
This is such a great tool to use. Funny how making it like a little “toy” makes spelling that much more fun!
Rachel–Love it!
I agree–it amazes me how making a hands-on manipulative makes learning that much more fun for little ones.
Awesome.
Also wondering how you formatted this–how do you get little scroll bars w/i your posts? 🙂
What a great DIY tool. I’ve done little “flip books” and this looks like a fun variation!
I love simple reading tools like this! We made something similar, but it was a flip book. I think I like your design much better.
These are great – children will love manipulating the wheel and the feeling of accomplishment: reading FOUR words! Well done!
I have no clue how the scroll bars are there and would love to get rid of them – if only I had the time to go through the code 🙂
I LOVE this! So creative! May we share this on our Blog? 🙂