Phonics / Reading Program

Ms. Cheryl has an Elementary Education degree from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She joined the Little Learners family in August 2012. Ms. Cheryl has taught the Pre-Primary and Pre-Kindergarten phonics/reading program during the summers since 2016, and full-time since summer 2025. 

Each child meets with Ms. Cheryl individually to work on letter names and sounds, blending simple words or reading phonics books. Children move through the program at their own pace and also participate in learning games and review activities.  

Children will be introduced to letters and sounds. As they practice and learn new letter sounds, children will be introduced to new letters. 

After children can recognize all the letters and sounds, they are introduced to blending simple words using word families. The first word family is the -op family with hop, mop, top, and pop. They will learn 2 word families for each vowel. 

After the children have practiced blending simple words, they are introduced to simple books containing words that can be decoded. The books will also introduce high frequency words that they will see often in easy readers. When children can read a book independently, they will bring a copy home to add to their reading library. The children should re-read the books in their library to parents and family members at home to develop their reading fluency and new skills.