And, our best-selling Ultimate Preschool Activity Pack is a must-have if you’re looking for similar activities!

Getting Ready

Before beginning these rhyming games, some teaching prep work is involved.  Teaching rhyming can be tricky. I was happy when I learned there is a rhyming teaching sequence. So you don’t have to worry about trying to teach rhyme identification and rhyme generation simultaneously.

The first step is for kids to learn how to identify words that rhyme. I find pictures sorts with three options work best at this level. An example of an activity is to lay out three pictures with two that rhyme and one that doesn’t. Then, ask a question such as, “which one rhymes with cake… dog or rake?” (The activities below focus on developing this skill.)

The next step is for kids to learn how to generate rhyming words on their own. So at this level, the kids can be challenged with prompts such as “think of a word that rhymes with key and bee…. tree, knee, see, me, we, etc.”

I’ve been advised before that even making up nonsense words is okay, as long as they rhyme. Kids certainly seem to love it when they can make up a word to rhyme with their own name.

Once kids get the hang of rhyming they will hopefully appreciate that “rhyme” and “slime” rhyme. I was stoked when I thought of that combo, so I hope your students enjoy the following activities!

Rhyming Games

The first game you can play is Rhyme Slime, which is a bit like a game of snap but with a twist.

Each player is given a set of rhyming cards and they take turns putting a card face up on the rhyme slime mat. They need to say the picture out loud e.g. “tree.” If there are two cards face up that rhyme, such as “tree” and “bee”,  the players needs to say “rhyme slime” and high five each other with the motion of slimy, slithery fingers!

The next rhyming game is a picture sort that includes the rhyme endings of -AT, -AN, – AKE, -EE. I usually work with two sets to begin with such as -AT and -EE. I begin by laying out the headings and saying the sounds.

I get the kids to take turns choosing a card and saying the name of the picture out loud. Then, they have to place it below the mat that rhymes.

The activity could be tweaked for kids who are ready to generate rhymes. You can use the headings as prompts to see how many rhyming words they can come up with.

The last activity is memory, also known as concentration. To play, kids randomly choose a few rhyming cards from the pile. For beginners, I’d stick to just two word families such as -AT and -EE.

Then, lay the cards face down in rows. Each player turns over two cards at a time. If they rhyme, they get to keep the pair and have another turn.

If they don’t rhyme, they need to turn the card back over and remember where it is. Then, the next player has a turn. The player with the most pairs wins.

Tip: Printing the cards on cardstock keeps players from seeing through to the other side.

Grab Your Set

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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.

If you’re feeling like your child or student is ready to read, check out our amazing Emergent Readers Bundle in our shop!

Getting Ready

To do this word family 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

Ready for the next step?! Check out our Emergent Readers Bundle in our shop for your beginning reader!

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See the surprisingly simple step-by-step below and then request an invite to our 4 week course, The Reading Roadmap, so you can get the proven, ready-to-deploy system for helping EVERY student thrive!

To Prep

I gathered a few supplies:

• • Plastic Easter eggs (one for each word family)
  • Permanent marker
  • Baking pan (one with a lip to contain the salt)
  • Salt, cornmeal or sand

While A ran around with her little brother hiding and finding eggs, I grabbed 6 plastic eggs, an empty egg carton and a Sharpie.  After cutting the carton in half, I took the pink egg and holding it sideways wrote “at” on the pointy top half.   I then rotated the other half around writing letters, like b, c and f,  to make different words in the -AT word family.  In a few minutes, I had 6 eggs with 6 word families for A to practice.

Next, I raided an old sensory bin for some colored salt and used it to cover the bottom of a baking pan.  There are a couple tricks to make writing in salt, sand or cornmeal successful.

First, try to use a thin layer of salt.  Too much salt makes the letters hard to read.  Second, line your baking pan with paper that contrasts with your salt to help the letters stand out and help the salt stay in place on the smooth pan surface.

To dye it, I simply placed a couple cups of salt in a Ziploc bag, added a few drops at a time of food coloring and massaged the salt until all the little chunks of dye were mixed thoroughly.

Liquid watercolor works as well.

Once it was mixed, I let the salt sit out overnight to dry. (You can also bake it on low for 10-15 minutes.)

Voila!  Now I had  a beautiful medium for letter trays, sensory bins and numerous art projects.

Word Family Game

While her brother was napping, I called A over and explained we would be working on word families.  I reminded her that a word family is a group of words that share a similar spelling pattern, such as bat, cat and fat.  I asked her to pick an egg and read the word she saw.

A grabbed the green egg with the -OT family on it.  She slowly sounded out the letters C-O-T then exclaimed, “cot!”  I  had her write the word in the sand, making sure she said the letter name as she wrote it.

“Ok, now you can rotate the egg to make a new word,” I explained as I showed her how to spin just the top of the egg to get a new beginning letter.   A loved spinning the tops around to make more -OT words. She did it over and over for a minute before returning to the more difficult task of writing.

As you can see in the photo, A is still working on writing her lowercase letters and occasionally substituted an uppercase.

No worries! I knew that any writing she does at 4 years old is great practice.

After a couple eggs and a dozen words, A grew tired of writing.  Instead, she turned her attention to rotating the shell around and reading the words as fast as she could, ” Ham, jam, ram, slam, dam, ham, jam…”.

In this case, the high speed repetition was a pleasing sound to my ears – which cannot be said for most of the things A insists on repeating!

Get More!

Request an invite to our 4 week course, The Reading Roadmap, so you can get the proven, ready-to-deploy system for helping EVERY student thrive!

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Kids will love playing with gold (who can blame them?!) and YOU’LL love that they’re practicing important reading skills.

To make it easier for you to get EVERY student bigger results, the freebie comes in TWO versions so you can quickly adjust the difficulty:

1. One focuses on rhyming
2. And the second option stretches students to spell CVC words.

Grab your copy below and then hop over and snag our 26 more word work centers your students will beg to repeat in our shop!

What Are 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…

Word families are great because they help students work on important reading skills including rhyming, recognizing spelling patterns and reading more fluently.

Getting Ready

Thankfully, the prep was quick and easy.

I printed off the pots of gold, the coins and the record sheet.

I slide the pieces through my laminator to make them durable enough that I could use them again and then cut along the lines to separate the pieces.

Viola! My prep was done.

Word Family Sort

With everything in hand, I invited my son over to join me.

(I was tempted to use my awesome leprechaun impersonation but decided to save it for St. Patrick’s Day. ?)

I explained that we were going to work on word families and, just like all of the people in our family have the same last name, all of the words in a word family end in the same sound.

I showed my son the leprechaun pots and we read the word families out loud together: -ET, -OP, -UG.

Then, I gave him the first piece of leprechaun gold and asked him to name the picture he saw.

“Pet!” he announced confidently.

Thinking carefully about the last sound he heard in that word, I challenged him to figure out what pot was a match.

After stretching out the word several times and focusing on the last sound, he slid the gold underneath the -ET pot.

One piece after the next, my son continued reading and sorting the coins from the pile until they all landed in the right spot.

Once all the gold coins had been placed by the correct pot, it was time to do a little review and writing practice!

After carefully reading each word out loud, my son wrote each word into the correct word family on the record sheet.

The activity was such a fun and easy way to add a little magic to March!

Grab Your Download

Click the blue “download” below to grab the freebie and then hop over to snag our mega pack of word work activities in our shop!

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To make it easier for you to get EVERY student bigger results, the freebie comes in TWO versions so you can quickly adjust the difficulty:

1. One focuses on rhyming
2. And the second option stretches students to spell CVC words.

Grab your copy below and then hop over and snag more print and play Editable Sight Word Games your kids will love in our shop!

Getting Ready

To play, I printed off the word family sort on cardstock to give it extra durability and cut along the lines to separate the pieces.

I printed off a record sheet for each player and – viola! We were all set for some penguin fun.

Word Family Penguin Sort

To start, I placed one ice rink and several sets of penguins on the table in front of the small group.

Since my students are new to CVC words, I wanted to work on only one family at a time.

I reminded the kids that word families have the same sound and end in the same letters.

For our first family, we chose to work on words ending in the -AN sound.

One by one, the kids drew a fish from the pile, read the word out loud and decided if it ended in -AN.

If it did, they placed the fish underneath the penguin.

If the fish didn’t belong, students simply placed it to the side so we could find its matching word family later.

Once my students had a handle on the -AN word family, we started working through the next two: -IG and -OP.

Gradually, I increased the number of word families on the table until all five were out and all the fish had been sorted.

Then, I handed out the record sheets and we worked together to read the penguins and add them to the matching column on the paper.

Grab Your Download

Click the blue “download” below to grab the freebie and then hop over to snag our awesome Editable Sight Word Activities in our shop so you can practice any word under the sun!

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Getting Ready

The prep for this activity was quick and simple. I printed the mats and cards on cardstock to give them extra durability and cut apart the pieces.

(If you’ll be using the sort in a classroom, you may also want to laminate the sheets for added sturdiness.)

Rhyming Mats

I chose a few mats for the kids to work on first so that they wouldn’t feel too overwhelmed.

We talked about how words that rhyme have the same ending sound. “Bat” and “cat” rhyme, “dog” and “log” rhyme and so on.

Listening to the last sound we hear in each word was quite tricky for some kids. I used the “cat” sorting mat first and explained that “cat”, “mat” and “hat” rhyme because they all end in the /-at/ sound.

We worked as a group to brainstorm other words that end in /-at/: rat, that, sat…

Then, I introduced some of the other rhyming picture mats like “tree.” Some kids picked it up quite easily and were able to think of other words that rhymed like “me”, “she” and “knee”. When it was time to complete the rhyming mats, I let those kiddos work on the entire set at once. They were ready for the challenge.

For kids that struggled with rhyming, I had them work on 2 or 3 rhyming mats at a time, giving them no more than six picture cards to choose from.

As they gained confidence and became more skilled at spotting words that rhyme, I added extra mats and pictures to their pile.

Grab Your Download

Ready for your picture mats?! Click the blue button below to snag your instant download!

Let’s be real—there are never enough hours in the day, right? Between lesson plans, meetings, and everything else, finding time to create reading resources feels impossible. That’s why I designed The Science of Reading Formula. It’s packed with ready-to-use tools that take the guesswork out of planning, so you can focus on teaching and reclaiming your evenings. Let’s make reading instruction simple, effective, and stress-free!

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Word work is an amazing way to take students’ reading to the next level because it gives kids a chance to play with words – breaking them apart, putting them back together, reading and writing them, sorting them…

But – let’s face it – word work is also one of the most time consuming parts of the day.

To make it REALLY work, we need to create different activities that are just right for each small group.

Alphabet activities for new readers, word family games for middle readers, silent e practice for more advanced readers…

Imagine what a time saver it would be to have everything in one spot.

Major life changer, right?!

Wish. Granted.

Organized by skill, the Endless Word Work Bundle gives you hundreds of ready to print activities practicing everything from rhyming to digraphs, sight words and more.

It’s a treasure trove of motivating and effective activities kids will beg to do again and again.

And because it covers such a broad spectrum of reading skills, it’s perfect for preschool, kindergarten and first grade classrooms. It’s so easy to differentiate for a huge variety of needs.

Grab your Endless Word Work Bundle in our shop!

Setting Up Reading Groups

Assessment

New to reading groups?! No problem. Here’s my general rundown of what it looks like in my classroom:

After giving students a baseline assessment to determine what reading strategies, letter sounds and words they know, I evaluate their reading level.

Sitting down with one student at a time, I give kids a low level book to read first, followed by books that are incrementally harder until we’ve found a book they can read with 90% accuracy.

I want students to be stretched a bit so that they need to practice their reading strategies but not stretched so far that they become frustrated and give up.

Once assessments are complete, dividing the class into small groups is a synch!

I simply group between 3 and 6 children who are at similar reading levels together.

Some groups may have a few more than others but, for the most part, it’s amazing how evenly they sort.

Word Work Centers

Introduction

While some kiddos are meeting with me for small group reading instruction, other groups are working on centers like writing around the room, reading independently and (you guessed it!) word work.

For very early readers, it could be rhyming or breaking words into syllables. For more advanced readers, it might be CVC words or vowel teams like OA, EE or AI.

Motivating Practice

Since I love making learning fun and memorable for kids, I pull out games whenever possible. No boredom allowed!

For those early readers, we play a rhyming game.

Break words into syllables.

Name individual sounds (also known as “phonemes”) in words.

Or work on identifying beginning sounds.

With more advanced readers, we work on letter names and sounds.

If my next group of readers is working on CVC words, we tackle the most common word families in the bunch.

And for students who were even further along in the reading process, we master sight words…

Work on digraphs…

That sneaky Magic E…

Blends…

And more!

With so many word work activities at my fingertips, it’s incredibly easy to differentiate for my students’ just right level.

In all, there are more than 220 activities to pull out and play!!

Reading

Once my kids have had plenty of practice isolating the new skill, they grab their book box filled with “just right” books.

For my early readers, I’d pull out one of the level A books included in the Word Work Bundle.

For those advanced kiddos, they would read a book with CVC or vowel team words.

Everyone gets the practice they need!

Everything in One Spot

I love having things organized and ready to print and play so the Endless Word Work Bundle includes more than 240 activities organized by skill.

Children learn:

PRE-READING SKILLS

• Motivating and confidence
• Rhyming
• Breaking words into syllables
• Identifying and replace phonemes
• Beginning and ending sounds
• Print concepts
• Name games

ALPHABET SKILLS

• Letter names
• Letter sounds
• ABC order
• Letter formation

BEGINNING READING 

• Blending sounds together to make words
• Word families (CVC words that share a spelling pattern like cat, mat and hat)
• Word work activities

MORE ADVANCED READING

• Sight words (the most common words in English)
• CVCe words (make, cute, like, etc.)
• Vowel team words (play, deer, boat, etc.)
• Digraphs (sh-, th-, ch-, wr-, qu-, etc.)
• Blends (cl-, fr-, sm-, etc.)
• Reading Comprehension

Your Collection Keeps on Growing

Plus, my favorite part of all is that you get instant access to EVERY reading activity set I ever create.

Every time I finish a new pack, I email it to you first! 

Grab Your Bundle

Ready to make your word work centers engaging and motivating for kids too?! Grab your Endless Word Work Bundle in our shop!

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This playful sort is a fun-filled way to help children learn word families.

Scroll below to grab your freebie and then make sure to hop over and snag our Editable Word Work Board  Games in our shop so you can practice word families or any words under the sun – it’s your choice!

Getting Ready

Prepping the activity was amazingly simple.

I printed off the web word families, review sheets and the spiders.

Then I cut out all 24 spiders. (That’s a lot of goosebump-raising creepy crawlies, isn’t it?!)

Spider Word Families

To start, I laid out one web word family and the spiders.

I reminded my students that word families are groups of words that share the same sound and spelling. For example, the words red, bed, Ted, led are part of the -ed family.

Working together, we found the word spiders that belonged on our first web.

Then, I added another web and had each student pick a spider to add to it.

The first child held up a spider and read the word out loud on the card: chin.

She realized the word chin belonged to the -in word family and placed it on the correct web.

We continued in a circle until all the webs had their correct word spiders.

After I checked the webs, I handed out the review sheets to stretch students’ learning.

We read the words and wrote each one in the right spot on the sheet.

Grab Your Download

Download your free spider game by clicking the blue button below and then hop over and grab our Editable Word Work Board  Games in our shop!

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Are you looking to supercharge your students’ reading growth? Boy, do we have an activity for you! Learning word families is a fast way to help students recognize a lot of new words quickly because they are groups of words that share the same sound and spelling. By learning the ending -OG for instance, students quickly understand how to read and write words like DOG, LOG, FROG, FOG. Talk about supercharged reading growth! This fun, hands-on word family game will have your students spinning with excitement.

Grab your set below and then join the priority list for our VIP teaching membership, The Science of Reading Formula, so you can unlock access to all of our brain-friendly teaching tools in one time-saving spot.

Prepping the Word Family Activity

To get ready for the game, you’ll need to gather a few things:

• Several sheets of card stock. (The thicker, the better.)
• A circular stencil
• A black marker
• Scissors
• A brad
• A printout of the Spin a Word printable

First, draw a circle on one sheet of cardstock and write ten beginning sounds around its rim. You can use any letters students have already learned! In The Science of Reading Formula, we teach the consonants M, S, F, P, T, C, N, D, R, L first but any beginning sounds will work. You can even write digraphs like SH, CH and TH if students have learned them.

Cut out the circle and then cut several long strips from the other pieces of cardstock. Write one word family at the end of each strip. You can choose any word families that work for you and your students, but if you use AT, IP, UG, OT, and ED, you’ll cover all the vowel sounds and several different consonants. Can you say endless word combinations?!

Next, attach one of the word family strips to your circle using a brad. Be careful to attach the brad to the center of your circle so that the wheel spins around evenly.

Word Family Activity

Now comes the fun! Ask students to spin a word and write it on the printable. Then, ask them to read the word out loud and decide if it is a real word or a nonsense word. If it is real, they will circle YES under the column “IS IT REAL?”. If it is not, they will circle NO. 

Students will continue playing until all of the spots on their record sheet have been completed. 

But wait! There’s more.

Once students are able to read and write words in one word family, simply detach the word family strip and add a new one like this: 

With one quick switch, you will be ready for a completely new game. 

If you love this activity and are excited to practice all kinds of words, snag our Editable Word Work Board Games in our shop or in The Science of Reading Formula so you can practice any words under the sun!

Download Now

Grab your set below and then join the priority list for our VIP teaching membership, The Science of Reading Formula, so you can unlock access to all of our teaching tools in one time-saving spot.

The post The Best Way to Learn Lots of Words Quickly? This Word Family Activity! appeared first on Playdough To Plato.