Word Family Game {Early Reading Activities}

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Understanding what a word family is can be an important pre-reading skill for preschoolers. Here are some great early reading activities that re-use bottle caps for learning fun. Kids Activities Blog hopes you enjoy this fun activity with your child.

Word Family Game

Bottle caps are great for so many kids’ crafts and activities, but they’re also great for literacy and math activities, too! We have a huge stash of bottle caps since our kids drink a ton of apple juice, and we make sure to save the bottles and caps for some upcycled fun and learning. My preschooler loves this bottle cap “game” we play to learn word families. Related: 60 Super Fun Family Time Activities

Materials

Bottle caps
Markers
Optional: round stickers

Early Reading Activities

Step 1

Choose the word families you want to learn. Tip: For beginners and pre-readers, the easiest word families tend to be “at,” “an,” “eg,” “et,” “it,” “ig,”og,” ot.” You can also try “ub” and “ad,” or whichever ones suit your child’s interest and ability the best.

Step 2

Write the letters and word family endings you want to learn on the top of your bottle cap. Tip: To make it easier to write on the bottle cap (if you’re not using permanent markers) and to block out anything printed on your bottle cap, place a plain round sticker on the bottle cap surface first.

Step 3

Set out one word family and a selection of letters your child can use to complete a word.

Preschool Activities

Make this activity easier by offering your child a selection of letters that you know will definitely spell a word.
Increase the difficulty by giving your child a random selection of letters and let her figure out which combinations spell a word.
If you have enough bottle caps, you can play a word family matching game: have your child put together or match up words with the same endings (e.g., fat, cat, hat, mat) or pick out the incorrect word family from a group (e.g., fat, cat, log, mat).
Use pictures of a word (e.g., a picture of a cat) and have your child sound out and then build the word that the picture represents.
Draw a word on a piece of paper and have your child place the matching bottle cap on top of your handwritten letters.

More Kids Activities

How have you taught your child what a word family is? There are many great early reading activities to help preschoolers enjoy learning to read. Here are a few kids activities that you might want to start with: