I had purchased one of these phonics-themed word search books for Jake about a year and a half ago. At the time, he was too young to grasp the idea of looking for words in a mass of ABCs. So I put it away for the time being.

This summer Jake gave these puzzles another go as part of our Kindergartner-in-Training activities . . .



There is one puzzle per page and each puzzle has a specific phonics theme, such as words that begin with "sp" or words containing "oo". Before Jake starts on each word search, I ask him to read the list of ten words provided. He usually can sound out at least half of them, which is pretty darn good. I help him with the ones he cannot figure out and then he is left to find the words on the list. Sometimes after he finds a word, he'll ask me again what it says.


For the first 2 or 3 puzzles, Jake asked for hints constantly. Eventually his skill developed and he was able to spot some words quickly. Then his confidence grew and he began to enjoy the puzzles, gaining a feeling of satisfaction every time he was able to cross a word off the list.