A fun activity to do with beginning readers, is to create story puzzles out of their favorite books.

1. Choose a simple book that only has one sentence per page.  We worked with the book, Who is the Beast? by Keith Baker.  I started by writing a few sentences on sentence strip paper (although you can use any type of paper). We read the sentences together and I asked my oldest daughter (6 years) to listen for those sentences while reading the book.  If your child is not already familiar with the book you are working with, I would recommend reading the book with them first.
2. After reviewing the sentence strips, we read the story together.
3. When our daughter recognized one of the sentences in the book, she picked out the matching sentence strip.  Next, she cut up each word in the sentence.
4. She then worked on re-constructing the sentence, using the words in the book as a guide. It is also a great opportunity to introduce the concepts of capital letters and periods.

Our youngest daughter (4 years) also participated in this experience.  The focus for her was on matching the letters in the words.

I clipped the words for each sentence together and stored them  in an envelope so that the girls can revisit the actvity another time.

Mariah is a mother of two and an educator. You can find more ideas and resources for family-friendly learning experiences over at her website, Playful Learning.