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If you only pick up one item for back-to-school, grab the Sentence Building Dominoes from Educational Insights! These Sentence Building Dominoes are super versatile and can be used by kids no matter where they are in their journey learning to read.

These are a must-have for families with kids learning to read and for any elementary teacher from kindergarten through third grade.

Read on for 5 simple, FUN ideas to learn with Sentence Building Dominoes! These tactile learning activities are organized from the most basic to the most advanced. And don’t miss the free Sentence Building Dominoes downloadable activities available on the Educational Insights website!

Count the words: Practice 1:1 correspondence!

Did you know being able to count the words in a sentence is an important part of learning to read?! Yep! Words make sentences, and sentences make words. Kids need to understand this and learn each printed word is one spoken word – this is one-to-one correspondence!

Build a simple sentence and invite the child to count the words. (For example, “I like the cookie.”) Then swap out one word in the sentence and count again! (“I like the book.” Or, “I like the school.”) Have the child touch each domino as they count.

This is a fabulous support for a child struggling with 1:1 correspondence, because it makes the learning tactile for them. Also, the dominoes are different colors. Visually, this helps the child see each of the separate words as they develop their understanding that each printed word is one spoken word.

Pick, read, and write: CVC words!

Choose several CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word dominoes, and place them in a bin of rice (or just an empty bowl). The sentence building dominoes include lots of CVC words like cat, bus, big, dad, ran, but, men, and many more!

Invite the child to choose a word, read it, and then write it. You can even add kids’ tweezers for pulling out the dominoes – this makes for added fun and fine motor practice!

CVC words are the perfect place to start with a beginning reader who is starting to blend letter sounds to make words. If a child knows all of their letters and letter sounds, support them as they begin to explore how these sounds are put together to make words!

Need a modification? If the child is just starting to blend letters to make words, start with words that all have the same middle vowel. For example, use the ran, cat, and dad dominoes. Distinguishing middle vowel sounds is tricky for beginning readers, so focusing on 1-2 at a time can be helpful to scaffold learning.

Word families!

Ready for more of a challenge? Try using the dominoes to practice word families (words that rhyme and are spelled with the same ending).

Pull out dominoes for word families you’d like the child to practice (you may want to target word families that end in -ear, -ice, -est, or another phonics pattern that is tricky for the child). Next, invite the child to pull a domino from that pile and write 3-4 words that are in that same word family! For example, if they pull the “best” domino, then they may write: rest, pest, vest. These are all words that end in -est.

Recognizing common word families is a powerful strategy for beginning readers to decode words more easily. This helps kids with chunking! If they can spot a word family they know when reading, it makes blending the beginning sound and the ending chunk quick and easy!

Sentence Building!

Offer your child a pile of dominoes, and invite them to build sentences!

Add an element of competition to increase the fun! How many sentences can you build? Who can build the silliest sentence? Or make it a game by taking turns picking dominoes from the pile – who will be the first to have enough words to build a sentence?

Want to add a writing component? Build sentences for each other and take turns writing them! This is a wonderful way to incorporate both reading and writing in a fun way!

Sorting: parts of speech!

These dominoes include color coded verbs, nouns, adjectives, and more. If your child is learning the part of speech, invite them to sort a pile of words into nouns and adjectives!

No matter where your child is in their journey learning to read, the Sentence Building Dominoes can meet your child where they are to build on their skills! This supply is perfect for back-to-school!

Did you know? The average American produces about 1,700 pounds of garbage every year, which means your personal annual trash pile weighs about the same as two large grizzly bears! Multiply that by a family of four and that’s a whole lot of trash filling our landfills, because although 75% of our trash can be recycled, only about a third is actually being recycled. In fact, more than 2.5 million tons of recyclable paper and paperboard waste end up in landfills every year, with packaging accounting for roughly a quarter of that total. More than 30 million tons of food waste also ends up rotting in the trash each year. Yup, our gross, grizzly-bear-sized trash piles are maxing out our landfills and polluting our environment. Luckily, there’s still hope – and our kids can help!

4 Family-Friendly Ways to Be Better Earth Buddies:

1. Pay attention to what you’re putting on your plate. Serve only what will be eaten, save the rest for another meal, and compost any uneaten food instead of throwing it in the trash. Kids can get hands-on composting experience with the Nancy B.'s Science Club® Garbage to Gardens Composting Kit, the only transparent composting kit designed just for them.

2. Become a conscious consumer. This means bringing your own bags to the grocery store (your kids can be responsible for remembering to bring them!) and a refillable coffee cup to Starbucks (when that’s allowed again), using a metal straw instead of plastic, and purchasing unpackaged items.

3. Research your city’s recyclable materials list and be sure to toss those items in the recycling bin, empty, rinsed, and dry. Our free, downloadable worksheet is a fun way for kids to learn about the different types of recyclables (while building fine motor and critical thinking skills, too).

4. Practice through play, like with the Design & Drill® Bolt Buddies™ Pick-It-Up Truck. Kids use a real, working, power drill to construct their own recycling truck, then play out their own community helper pretend play scenarios with the included sanitation engineer and his kitty cat co-pilot. Plus, all Design & Drill Bolt Buddies packaging does double duty as a playset, saving space in the landfill.