Playdough To Plato

Fun learning activities for kids! Literacy, math, science and more.

Word Family Garden

by Filed Under: First Grade Reading, Kindergarten Reading, Letter Sounds, Plato's Blog, Preschool Reading, Scissor Cutting, Sound Out Words, Sounds in Words, Spring, Word Family Activities 19 Comments

Activity for 4 to 6 year olds.

Do your kids have a serious case of spring fever too?  This word family garden is a great way to focus all of that warm weather daydreaming on an important reading concept: word families!

Word Family GardenPut simply, word families are groups of words that share similar spelling patterns.  For example, the words {hot, pot, cot} are all part of the {-OT family}.  The words {cat, sat, pat} are part of the {-AT family}.  Knowing word families helps children with rhyming, spelling, and reading.

Getting Ready

To do this activity, I gathered a few supplies:

  • 1 large piece of white paper for the background.  Mine was 22 x 16 inches.
  • 4 pieces of different colored paper to make flowers. I used red, blue, yellow and orange.
  • 1 piece of green paper to make stems.
  • Scissors.
  • 1 marker.

I cut out 4 flowers and 4 centers from the colorful construction paper.  Then I glued one center on each of the flowers like this:

{Playdough to Plato}

Next, I wrote one word family on each of the flower centers.  I used {-op, -ed, -ug, -at} but you could pick anything.

The Word Family Garden

My son and I brainstormed words from each word family. Since he’s still in the prewriting stage, I wrote each word on a different petal.  {If your child has started sounding out words on his own, this is a great time to have him write the words independently.}

{Playdough to Plato}

We cut out green stems for the flowers and glued them onto the large piece of white paper.  Then we glued the flowers on top.

Word Family Garden Craft and Literacy Activity in One.

Viola!  Our word family garden was complete.

Find More

For more word family fun, check out our Word Family Activity Pack filled with eight motivating word family activities.

Uber Fun Word Family Activity Pack. {Playdough to Plato}

Malia Hollowell
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Malia Hollowell

Founder at Playdough to Plato
Malia is a National Board Certified teacher who inspires educators with playful approaches to early childhood education. She earned her Master’s from Stanford University and has taught in Pre-Kindergarten through 2nd grade. Malia shares her motivating learning activities on her two popular teaching blogs Playdough to Plato and The STEM Laboratory.
Malia Hollowell
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Comments

  1. Moinul says
    August 27, 2018 at 10:41 pm

    Amazing way of learning vocabulary.

    Reply

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