Making a Beginning Reader Lift-the-Flap Book

In this post Jodie of Growing Book by Book shares a clever tutorial for making a fun lift-the-flap book tailored to your beginning readers level of reading ability.

Beginning readers need lots of practice with “just right” reading materials to learn and grow.  Perfect leveled books can be challenging to find for these new readers. Here is a fun hands-on beginning reader book that is easy to make and easily customized to fit your reader’s needs.

MAKING A BEGINNING READER
LIFT-THE-FLAP BOOK

Materials needed:

• 4×6 mini album photo album
• 4×6 blank or lined index cards
• stickers or old magazines
• masking tape
• markers and dry erase marker (optional)

To make:

1. Place a strip of masking tape along one short end of an index card leaving half of the tape hanging over the edge.

2. Put another index card on top of the first and tape again.

3. Repeat one more time.

4. Pick up the stack of cards and fold over the tape.  Trim the edges.

5. On the top card write a word that your child needs to practice decoding.  You could use two colored markers to write the letters so that you can emphasize the vowel sound in each word.

6. Open the card and on the left side draw or glue a picture of the word you wrote.

7.  On the card to the right, write a simple sentence such as, “I see a _______.”

8.  Repeat the process on the back side of the cards.

9.  You are now ready to assemble the pages in your book.  Slide the middle index card into the one of the plastic sleeves of the photo album. Let the other two cards each hang over a side sleeve of the album.

10.  Continue steps 1-8 to create additional pages for the book.

You can also see the construction process in this short video;

 

Now it is time to read and play.

Introduce the new book to your child.  Encourage him to read the word and then lift the flap to reveal the picture and see if the word is correct. Have your child read the sentence.  Then, with the dry erase marker your child can write the focus word on the plastic sleeve (optional).

One of the neat things about this book is that you can trade the pages for new pages as your child’s reading grows.

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