25 GAMES TO LEARN TO READ AND WRITE FROM 3 YEARS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

In this article I will show you 25 games and activities to learn to read and write that you can do with your child or your students, both at home and at school. They are activities, exercises and strategies with simple materials with which children will learn easily and little by little.

Training readers is necessary for our society and for educating free, autonomous and informed citizens. Citizens who know how to make decisions about their destinations and learn. Knowing how to read brings us closer to the world, helps us to cross borders, allows us to learn, is a means to get to know ourselves and to know others.

Encouraging children through exercises and games so that they learn to read and love reading can make them arouse their curiosity, know how to express and describe their emotions, dream, imagine and develop their creativity.

Reading is an act of thinking that implies that the person has to mobilize their cognitive resources to be able to interpret the message in front of them and actively construct reading.

It is a process of constant interaction between the words of the text and the person, actor of the process. It is not simply decoding symbols nor is it mechanical, you have to understand the message.

It seems that reading and writing are considered mechanical or instrumental learning, but they are fundamental for the cognitive and affective development of the person, to develop thinking, communication or interaction.

Children must know that reading allows them to communicate with other people, receive messages, that allows them to discover and enjoy.

How do you learn to read?

There are different levels of learning to read. Children begin at the presyllabic level, where they begin to discover the difference between letters and pictures.

Later there is a syllabic level where phonological awareness begins and sounds are associated with spellings.

At the next level, transitional between syllabic and alphabetic, children begin to combine syllabic with alphabetic. Finally, at the alphabetic level, they understand the system by relating each of the letters to a phoneme.

Reading and writing develop at the same time, in an integrated process, they are dynamic processes that are built at the same time.

25 games, activities and exercises to learn to read and write

1. Letters with objects

A good activity for children to learn to identify letters, which is a preliminary step to learning to read, is to work them with different objects.

One of the very useful objects can be the play dough. You can offer your child plasticine of different objects and mold it to form each of the letters that you propose.

It is advisable to start with the vowels (a, e, io, u) and then expand with the consonants.

Another option is to make letters with the human body. You can make the letter A for example, by standing two children who put their heads together and shake hands (forming a letter A).

One option is to lay down the letters and take photographs, which you can then work to identify which letters are behind them and encourage the children to pronounce them, to look for words that begin with that letter, etc.

2. Games to become aware of syllables

You can work through clapping, for example. You propose to the child a list of different words (you or him can propose them, to motivate him more) such as motorcycle, light or dove and, together with the child, clap according to the number of syllables.

If the word is "dove", you would say to the child: "pa" (a pat), "lo" (another pat), "ma" (another pat). Clapping together.

Other activities to work on phonological awareness can be to make as many lines under the word as there are syllables or place as many stickers or pictures as there are syllables in the word.

3. Identify vowels

To begin to identify the vowels, you can propose pairs of words or trios that start with different vowels, for example:

Water / Bear / Elephant

You ask the child to identify the word that begins with the vowel A, for example.

Other alternatives are to do it with images and the child has to say what object it is (water, bear, elephant) and choose by sound which is the letter A. For example, in the following image they have to identify the one that begins with 0 (bear) or by E (elephant).

Later it can be expanded and also done with consonants.

Other alternatives can be to have letters with different images and to have five baskets, one for each vowel. You paint each of the baskets with a color (the red A, the yellow E, the blue I, the purple O and the orange U).

Create cards with objects or images that start with vowels (for A: water, plane, bus), for O (bear, eye, olive) and ask the child to say out loud what the object is and what sort within the appropriate vowel box.

So that you can check if you have done it correctly, put a sticker behind the card in the color of the box to which it belongs and write the word so that you can check it.

3. Join pictures

Another activity that you can do is the following: you take a vertical sheet of paper and put eight drawings in two columns (four in each part).

You ask the child to connect with a cross a drawing on one side with another drawing on the opposite side. The key to putting it together is that you must detect and match the pictures that have the same number of syllables.

On one side can be drawn: cat, ball, bread and car. On the other side: book, house, fish and painting. The child must match cat-house, ball-paint, pan-fish, car-book.

4. Magnetic whiteboard

Another activity is to write different words on cards and ask the child to write them on the magnetic board. To do this you must search among all the letters and select the correct one.

1-You break a sheet of paper into several small pieces.

2-You write an incomplete word in each piece. Example: _AMAMP. All the pieces with the incomplete words are put in a container.

3-The child takes a piece at random.

4-The child is asked to write the complete word of the piece he has taken on the board.

5. Songs of the alphabet and vowels

A simple but no less interesting game is to find and teach the child songs that contain the letters of the alphabet.

Another very good alternative is to sing well-known songs and ask the child to try to sing them with only one vowel (with the A, with the E).

There are many popular songs, such as that of I have a little ant in the panchita where the vowels are changed to focus only on one.

Example (sung with the rhythm of the song):

I have, ooh oooh! An ant on my little leg, aah aaah

That is tickling me, aah aaah

That itches me, that it itches me. (The original lyrics)

With the letter A:

Thong, aah aaah! Ana harmagata still the potato, aah aaah

Ca ma is hacanda cascallatas, aah aaah

Ca ma paca, ca ma paca.

6. Play see-see

The I see-I see is a good resource to be able to start reading. A variant that you can do is to do the I see-I see in the following way: I see, I see, a thing that begins with au- (bus) or saying how I see, I end, a word that ends in -bus.

You can also do it in the traditional way emphasizing the phoneme. I see, I see something that begins with the letter P (pppppppp). You can try all the words that occur to you for that letter.

7. Cards with syllables

You can prepare different cards with different syllables, as many as you can think of, and ask the child to make words from the cards.

When he takes the first syllable, for example PA, you can ask him what word he imagines can continue.

It works like this:

1- You tear up several pieces of paper and write a syllable on each one. For example: PA, BE, EN, TA, PO, RA, LI…

2- The child takes a piece of paper at random from a container and has to say a word that comes to mind. Example: Mouse.

8. Recognize letters

At first, when children are beginning to learn letters, they need to recognize them.

An activity for them to learn to see which letters are the same and which are different, especially with some that are physically similar (pyq, byd), it can be a good activity to write them many times: bbbbbdbbb b.

We ask the child to round the different letter.

Another activity can be to ask you to round the b's and mix them in the same row: bbdbbbdddb b.

9. Books with pictograms

Reading stories with children is always a good option for them to start reading and get excited about reading.

A very good option when they begin to read is to make pictogram books.

They are stories where we replace some of the words with pictures, so that reading can be more fluid.

You can make these books yourself by inventing little stories or taking some ready-made ones and substituting different elements (tree, car, cat) for a drawing.

10. Word searches and crosswords

Word searches are very useful activities when children are beginning to read. At first, when they are beginning to learn letters, we can ask them to look for certain letters.

If you are precisely teaching your child to read English, the following is a good example. You will have to search for the words in the left column and they can appear vertically, horizontally or diagonally.

11. What word does this letter have?

Another activity can be to present different words to the child and ask him to color only those that have the letter A. We can write the words or put the pictures.

For example: banana, eye, flan, ear, chicken, brush.

We ask the child to color those words that have the letter A.

12. All the words you can think of

Another activity can be to have different cards, as many as letters of the alphabet or just the vowels, for example. On the other hand, we will have another pile of cards with different things (animals, fruits, colors).

We randomly draw one of the letters, for example P. We must choose another card from the other pile. For example, animals. We take an hourglass and turn it over.

We must tell the child that at that time he should say as many animals as he can think of that begin with the P (pppp): duck, chicken, chick, pony.

13. Color by voice

Put different pictures in groups, for example: girl, dog, sun and sea. And you ask the child to paint only those words that are read with a blow of voice.

For example, you should paint sun and sea.

14. Working syllables

We write different words: dove, paella and ball, for example.

DOVE

Under it, you write _ LO MA

Below, _ _ MA

And below _ _ _

You ask the child to write the whole word and draw it.

15. Upper and lower case

In a text you insert uppercase and lowercase letters and give each of them a different color.

For example, the upper case may be RED and the lower case BLUE. You put the following: F t L m M j K l

You must color it according to whether it is a capital letter or a lowercase letter. You can ask him to put under what would be the same letter in the opposite (upper / lower case).

16. Memory with words

One activity is to create a memory with words. To do this, you must create double cards (for example chicken / chicken, tree / tree, house / house). As many as you want.

Then you play with the child shuffling the letters and turning them upside down. The game consists in that, in turns, you have to pick up a card and read what it says and then pick up another and read it to see if they match.

17. Bingo of letters, syllables or words

Another game can be to create a bingo, but instead of doing it with numbers, we can do it with words, syllables or letters.

To do this, if we do it with letters, we will create cards that have different letters. And each of the balls will have a letter of the alphabet. Thus, we will randomly take out the balls with the letters and they will be said out loud.

Each player must cross out the letter from his card if he has it and both line and bingo can be done when the person has crossed out all the letters on his card.

Other variants are with syllables or words.

18. Word chain

A fun game is the word string. It is proposed to start with a word, for example dove, and the child is asked to form new words from the last letter or the last syllable (they are two variants of the same game).

Thus, if we start with dove and play with the syllables, the child must continue with another word that begins with ma, such as hand, and we would continue with no, for example, night and so on.

19. The goose of words or syllables

You can create a goose (by drawing it) and inside each box you can put syllables or words.

In this way, you start with the starting square and you must roll the dice. If the number 3 comes out, you advance three squares. The person who touches her must read the word or the syllable that she puts in her box (if it is with the syllable, she can form a word, that is, finish it).

If the person guesses correctly, they continue playing and if they fail, it is up to the next person.

20. Puzzle

You can also create a puzzle with cardboard. Each of the letters of the alphabet must have two pieces joined together like a puzzle. On one side, you write the letter (for example, A) and on the other side you draw something that begins with that letter (for example, airplane).

It is about the child joining each of the letters with its corresponding object,

21. Rhyming games

It is about proposing to the child different groups of words. We offer you first one, for example: DOVE.

Below we write or draw (two different variants of the same exercise) different words, for example: rubber, tuna and fish. The child must read them and select the word that rhymes with the previous one.

22. The house

A fun activity can be to print a photograph of a house (in the doll's house style) where all the rooms in the house are visible: the kitchen, the living room, the toy room, the bathroom.

We create cards with different objects that we can find in a house: soap, bed, spoon. And we ask the child to read each of the cards and place it in its corresponding room.

23. Choose the correct word

We place the drawing of an object, for example a PAN and write the correct word and two incorrect ways of writing the same word below.

For example, we write: PAN PEN PIN

And we ask the child to select the word that has the correct meaning.

24. Solve the mystery

This game consists of presenting a picture that has a hidden word. For example: DENTIST.

We must replace each of the letters (DENTIST) with a drawing that begins with that letter (for example, we substitute D for a dolphin, E for an elephant, N for a nose, T for a tomato, I for an Indian, the S for a rattle, the T for a tomato, and the A for a tree).

In this way, a list of different drawings will remain online. The idea is to find out what letter each of the pictures begins with and place it below.

Finally, the child discovers what is the word behind it.

25. Word leak

It is about writing words with one of the letters missing. For example: _OMATE, YELLOW_, SHARK_.

The child must add the missing letter to complete the word.

Benefits of reading

There are several reasons why it is important to help children learn to read and, above all, to promote its importance:

- Reading helps us understand the world

- Reading is words and the world is made of words

- Information and reading is the wealth of society

- Reading gives us pleasure

- Images present the world as objects and words show us the world with ideas

- Words help us to know ourselves better, to understand our emotions and know how to express them, and also to know others

- Reading is relevant for attention and concentration

- It puts us in contact with our inner self

The reader is not born, the reader is made, and that is why it is important to instill that reading is important and can be a great source of pleasure and satisfaction.

The pleasure of reading can be achieved in children when the act of reading itself is productive, comprehensive and the reader feels that he is a participant in that process.

References

1. National Council for Educational Development of Mexico (2011). I learn with my name: Guide to teach reading from the proper name.
2. Máñez Aracil, M., Martínez Martínez, MP (2009). Reading, an adventure: Guide to make good readers. Valencian generalitat.
3. Romero, L. Learning to read and write.