Easy to Create Flip Books

As you watch your child sound out letters to create each word, you learn a little more each day about the wonders and mysteries of learning to read. My Sunshine would read each phonetic word correctly, but even after a while, she was still sounding out each individual letter. She wasn't absorbing the sound combinations and I was witnessing that is just wasn't as easy for her to read those words as it could be.


I scrounged around the house for some type of materials to create something that would help her see the pattern.
I was determined I could make something from materials I already had in the house. This was mainly due to the fact that taking three young children on a "quick trip" was never as quick as I thought it might be. They are wonderful and well-behaved when we run errands, but lets face it, even a normal 5 minute trip turns into a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour after you load up, unload, buckle in car seats/booster seats, get the sock seam all lined up just perfectly, and the fact that everyone always seems to have to go to the bathroom when you get to the store (even though everyone just went at home). I have come to the conclusion that this "urgent potty need" arises from curiousity about each store's bathroom versus the actual need to go. My children are just amazed at the potty that flushes itself and the automatic faucets and towel dispensers. I bet I could turn that interest into a science lesson one day!

Anyway, I found some large index cards. I hand-wrote common letter combinations in the middle of each card. Then, I cut small sections of index cards to write individual letters that would create words when flipped over in the book. For example,  my "it" book has "it" written in the middle of the card. I created letter cards ("b","f","h","k","l","p","s","w","z") that I stapled on the far left side of the card. Now, we practice reading "it" as a combination of letters, then we turn the first card over and we created "bit", turn the next card and we created "sit," etc. Her eyes lit up as she created the new words. She was so excited, I thought I was sitting in front of Nancy Drew as she solved her first mystery!