Re-use old books for Pre-reading and Pre-writing activities

Do your kids ever ruin books (i.e. rip pages, or destroy the binding of the book) so much so that they are not fixable?  I saved a Diego book that the girls destroyed when I was busy making dinner one day, and cut it up to make little activity sheets for my 4 year old.  We are doing Preschool at home so these sheets were part of our unofficial "school day".  My daughter likes it when I call it "School" because several of her cousins are attending out-of-home Preschools and it helps her to understand that she's not missing out, but that we are merely doing ours here at home.

You can be creative, but just cut the words apart to give some separation between words so that they can see each word as separate.  We worked on sounding words out.  We worked on using her pointer finger to track the words as we read.  We worked on writing and tracing some of her letters.  We worked on rhyming words.  We worked on letter sounds, especially vowel sounds.  We worked on word recognition. There are just so many possibilities, so don't throw away those broken books!  Use them for learning!

My 2 1/2 year old worked on letter recognition (no old book necessary).  Just write a letter at the top in one color and write the same letter a few times down below.  Add a few other letters in various colors and see if your kiddo can find the letters that are the same as the one on top.  Elise did very well.  Next we will do the same but without color and see if she can still recognize the letters.  Oh how fun it is to watch little minds make connections!