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!
Put 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:
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.}
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.
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.
Malia Hollowell
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Fabulous! I taught first grade and know how badly children want school to end when the weather is so nice outside. Great engaging idea! Carolyn
Thank you, Carolyn!
What a fun way to explore the reading process!!
Thank you, Deborah!!
I like the way you use the phrase “word family” for rhyming. I think that will help my son with rhyming when he hears words that sound the same. I’ve tried making up stories for him with word families…The cat found a rat and they shared a big hat!
Great idea, Heather!
Thank you! This is perfect for my self-contained special education class!
My pleasure, Rhonda! Thanks for taking the time to say, “hello”.
I love this activity so very much!
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an very long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up.
Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again.
Anyways, just wanted to say great blog!
What a cute idea! Pinning this one for our centers next year!
Wonderful idea to get my son involve in the studies.