Early Reading Idea

Here's an early reading tool that's fun, fast, and easy (did I mention cheap?).

You take a piece a paper and cut six slits in it (three sets of two).

You take a second piece of paper and cut it lengthwise into strips (however wide you made the slits).


You write some letters on the strips. I used c, s, h, m, p, f, and b for the first strip; a, e, i, o, and u for the middle one; and t, n, s, m, p, and g for the last one. Personally, I think it's important to use lower case letters, but you can do anything you like.

That's it! Oob has been quite fascinated and will play with it (with or without me) for quite a while. I think Choclo is interested as well. I may make one for him that includes a silent e (fourth strip alternating e and blank space).

I suspect this idea could be adapted to math (matching dots and numbers, simple addition or subtraction problems), science (life cycles of plants, frogs and butterflies), or other things.