Reading Activities for 4 Year Olds

Sharing is caring!

These reading activities for 4 year olds will help children get ready to read through fun, hands-on activities to do at home or in school.

Children read at different stages in their life, but the preschool age is a great time to build the foundation for future reading. There are many ways to keep pre-reading light and fun for 4 year olds. These reading activities for 4 year olds will help build a foundation in literacy through fun! 

Reading Activities for 4 Year Olds

‘Reading’ can begin with so much more than just a book! Reading is everywhere. From looking at street signs to looking at a recipe to bake together, there are opportunities to learn to read all around. 

Here are more fun ways you can practice building sight words or letter identification through fun and play! Many of our play ideas for 4 year olds and games for 4 year olds include early reading in them too.

Fun Reading Activities

Magnetic letters: let children experiment with trying to make words on the fridge with these or on a cookie sheet, then sound them out together. This usually ends in a lot of giggles, but they learn how to string letter sounds together.

Letter stamps: we love these self-inked letter stamps for making words on paper. You can also get traditional letter stamps and press them into playdough or kinetic sand to build words too.

Dry erase board games: write a handful of sight words on a dry erase board, then call out a word and have your child find and erase it. Make it a game by having children take turns or run to the board in a relay race.

Make a book: if your 4 year old isn’t writing letters yet, they can draw illustrations and dictate a book to you. This is a fun collaborative project, and they will take pride in making their own story. 

Predict books: when reading, stop and ask your child to make predictions about what will happen next. See if they can guess right! 

Sight word games: you can make a sight word game anywhere! Draw some sight words on the sidewalk in chalk and smash them with water balloons on a warm day, or write some sight words on plastic cups and throw soft balls at them to knock them down. 

Act out a Story: pick a narrator and assign characters to the children. Read the story once so the children are familiar with the story and their character, then read it a second time with everyone acting it out. This is great for reading comprehension.

Wipe away words in shaving cream: similar to the sight word games above, spread some shaving cream on a table surface and write sight words with your finger. Children can identify and read then word, then wipe it away. Or, for children working on writing sight words, spread some shaving cream on a table then tell them a sight word or show them a flash card, and they can write the word themselves.

Recite rhymes: reading and speaking rhymes are great for literacy. It helps children understand how language works, and helps them identify sounds within words. 

Have so much fun with these reading activities for 4 year olds!

More fun activities to try with 4 year olds:

1. 65+ Fun Activities for 4 Year Olds
2. 10 Fun Play Ideas for 4 Year Olds
3. Fun Games for 4 Year Olds
4. Activities for 4 Year Olds to do at Home

Pin these reading activities for 4 year olds

Sharing is caring!