W is for Words.
We have an early reader in our house, a gal who just can’t get enough of words to say, words to read. Our
phonics flip chart is our friend!
We made it last fall and with the help of that book, my daughter can sound out and read short words like a champ. However, she’s slow when it comes to sounding out words with blends.
Word Families Book
Time for a new phonics chart! These are so easy to make and to use. They take mere minuets to make and it’s nice to listen to her chant out her “words” while I am doing the dishes or whatever. Our new flip chart focuses on blending (or chunking) words.
How to Make a Word Families Book
- We used a pack of the 3×5 index cards that come on a binder.
- Cut all of the cards so that roughly 2/3rds of the card was on the right and 1/3 on the left.
- Then I used this list of most common word families as discovered through the book, Kid Writing, and added them in the top cover.
- I also wrote the endings on all the cards in the chart.
Then I added the first letters and beginning blends. Some of the blends we added to our chart included: ab, ad, bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl, br, cr, dr, fr, gr, tr, th, sh, ch, wh, sch, sk, sn, sm, sp, st, str, sw, kn, etc.
The majority of the words in the English language can be created from the blending of these “word families” and the various “beginning” combinations.
This is a great way to help kiddos understand how to break down and “chunk” their words.
To make this a bit more challenging, ask your kiddos to use the word they created in a sentence. It is fun, not all of the blends “mix” to make real words and it’s cute to hear the definitions and “sentences” Lena uses with her pretend words.
Add a kitchen timer, and my 5 year old is now homeschooling herself!
If only math were as easy!
If you are learning sight words, check out our favorite way for
kids to independently practice those!
Your Child Can!
Do you have any reading tips or any favorite manipulatives that you have made to help your kiddos learn? 
Hi:
Love this idea! Just a quick note though… I assume you mean mere “minutes” to create (unless you’re very musically minded).
Cheers,
Cate
Thanks for sharing. I love the idea where you ™ve added the list of common word families on the top page.
This is such a great resource Rachel. Thanks for sharing. I’ll be featuring this post as part of my Reading roundup because I’m sure many parents would find this helpful. xo Pauline
Fantastic idea, thanks a million. I was looking for this kind of activity for my kindergarteners.
really it is geat idea
Well aren’t you just a smarty pants! So awesome.. DOING IT!
Thank you! My daughter is struggling to segment and blend words in her kinde class. Love this idea for her. Going to make it this afternoon!!
Just stopping by with congratulations! This post was in the top 5 most popular posts for December on Fun Family Crafts! Thanks for sharing your creativity! If you would like to see the post and grab a TOP 5 button, you can get one here http://funfamilycrafts.com/december-2011-top-posts/ Thanks!
I honestly wouldn’t teach her the blends, but teach the individual sounds. I love your little booklet though, and I’m going to use your idea! Kids end up in our tutoring program who are stuck not being able to “take apart” a blend – for instance, they have learned that “bl” is *one sound*, and when they need to read “br”, they can’t because in their mind the “b” is followed by the “l” sound together. They can’t separate it. Obviously kids with higher reading ability can figure that out, but so many of them struggle because they are asked to skip the decoding step and learn the blends. So we teach a Phono-graphix based system and have huge success with it! 🙂
Kirsty, did you see her other book idea like this? Earlier, she posted the same sort of word book with 3 parts to learn to sound out simpler words letter-by-letter. I think this is the next step up from that.
Great idea…I will use it with my ESL kiddo’a