Guides to Using Starfall

In Colors!, children learn to recognize the colors and color names, as well as the color used in phrases and sentences. Each color activity ends with a reward.

In Backpack Bear’s Books, children read emergent texts using high frequency and pre-decodable words.

Pre-decodable stories are made up of simple high-frequency words and pictures to represent words.

Concepts such as blending, positional words, weather and vowels are introduced by Backpack Bear.

Starfall’s Short Vowel Pal books are decodable books that each focus on the use of specific vowel sounds.

In Starfall’s Short Vowel Word Machines, children have the opportunity to change the beginning and ending sounds in consonant/vowel/consonant words.

Children may progress at their individual paces using texts that become increasingly more challenging.

Confidence in their reading skills will increase as they naturally progress from reader to reader.

The subject matter adapts to the level of the reader and ranges from simple fiction to more complex nonfiction.

Each unit targets specific phonics skills.

In our Learn to Read activities, children practice beginning reading skills with a focus on short and long vowels using games, movies, puzzles and emergent readers.

Our It’s Fun to Read activities give children the opportunity to create their own Me Character as well as explore art, magic, music, poetry, tongue twisters and bird riddles.

In Songs + Rhymes, children will enjoy nursery motion songs, abc rhymes, historical folk songs, and classic sing-along songs.

In our I’m Reading activities, children can read along from a variety of genres including plays, fiction, nonfiction, comics, folk tales, Greek myths and fables

Our Calendar helps children learn the days of the week, months of the year, holidays, and special events.

In Starfall’s holiday activities, children play holiday-themed activities, including:

• Picking a pumpkin and choosing shapes to create a jack-o-lantern while reinforcing short u
• Personalizing a turkey and focusing on the sound /ur/
• Personalizing a gingerbread boy or girl by following directions and choosing from a variety of 2D and 3D shapes and colors
• Helping Zac write a letter
• Building a snowman and practicing numbers and number words by singing
• Celebrating the hundredth day of school, counting by ones and tens
• Learning about Groundhog Day
• Creating valentines by following directions and choosing from a variety of characters, cards and text
• Finding a four leaf clover and a rainbow appears
• Helping the rabbit by going on a word hunt finding adjectives and verbs
• Participating in a sorting activity to help clean up the earth
• Discovering what a seed needs to grow.

In More Phonics: Unit 1, children use their phonics skills to read and build words.