The Blue Series Box 5, Picture cards and reading Lists

Box five is the 'mystery box'.  It contains folds of paper with a word written on them that the child is encourage to try and read to themselves.  My MCI tutor said that these should be exciting words that make the child laugh like 'stink' or themes of words such as animals or plants.  By this stage there will be a huge variety of words that you can use as the child will have experienced all of boxes one to four already.  The other option is to have blank pieces of paper and to write a word on to it as you sit with the child.  When I did this with Eve during the pink series, I was surprised by her taking over and writing words for me to decipher!

Picture cards are an A4 sheet with... yes you guessed it.... pictures on them!!!! On the back is fixed an envelope with the words inside it and the child matches them to the correct picture after reading them.  Some new ideas to introduce here could be compound words and the 'schwa vowel'.

Compound words - these are a combination of two words to make one.  Both parts of the word should be phonetically decodable and contain blends that the child can recognise.
windmill
handbag
lipstick
zigzag
cobweb
dustbin
nutmeg
milkman
pumpkin
wigwam
rabbit
lollipop

Schwa vowel  - these are vowels that because of the peculiarities of the English language, all sound like 'u' regardless of what they actually are.  There is no hard and fast grammatical rule for the child to learn, s/he just needs experience in recognising them!
lemon
pedal
signal
petal
camel
metal
sandal
medal
infant
button
panda

reading lists - These can be made up of ten words each. They usually have a picture at the top with the first word on the list corresponding to that picture, but they can just be lists of words.  They can be used to reinforce patterns at first, for example words all beginning with 'cl' or all ending in 'st'.  As the child becomes more experienced, the words can be jumbled up more.  Take words from all of the lists for boxes one to five to make up the reading lists (the ones in blue won't have been used before as there isn't a picture to go with them).