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February 10, 2015 by Jenae - 4 Comments
This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy.

Word Family Snowball Toss

Word Family Snowball Toss



 

Word families can be a beneficial component in your teaching-your-child-to-read toolbox.

To put it simply, word families are words that rhyme. Teaching children word families is a phonemic awareness activity that helps children see patterns in reading. This is an important skill because it allows children to begin “reading” by grouping sets of letters within a word. The first part of a word is called the onset and the last part of the word is conveniently called the rime (yes, spelled r-i-m-e, not r-h-y-m-e…it’s a bit confusing). Word families share a similar “rime” as the onset changes.
 
Once your child recognizes the word “mop”, he’ll then have an advantage to reading all of the other words that have the same rime (top, pop, stop, cop, hop) because only one letter is changing. Plus, recognizing rhyming words is a great language skill in and of itself!

This word family snowball toss activity combines decoding and gross motor fun…the perfect blend for kiddos who have a hard time sitting still!

 

Here’s what you’ll need:  ping pong balls, 4 small containers, a dry-erase marker and a permanent marker.

 

 

IMG_6659

1. Use a permanent marker to write words in specific word families on individual ping pong balls. I wrote the words on both sides of the ball.

Here are some of the words we used:

_at word family: 
bat
cat
fat
hat
mat
pat
rat
sat

_op word family:
cop
hop
mop
pop
top

_an word family:
ban
can
fan
man
pan
ran
tan
van

_ack word family
back
hack
jack
lack
pack
quack
sack
tack

IMG_6669

 2. Use a dry erase marker to write the rimes of each word family on the containers. You should be able to wipe it off afterwards.

 

 

IMG_6665

 

 

 

IMG_6716

Have your child choose a ping pong ball and read the word by saying each sound.

 

 

IMG_6718

 

 

 

 

IMG_6722

 Then have him/her throw the ping pong ball snowball into the corresponding bucket.

 

 

IMG_6655

 

 

Word Family snowball toss square

 

Check out more ways to make reading fun here. 

 

 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Nancy Taylor says

    February 10, 2015 at 3:36 pm

    Love this idea! I will definitely try this with my grandsons.

    Reply
  2. Kristina @ School Time Snippets says

    December 3, 2015 at 5:10 pm

    This is AWESOME!! Such a fun way to practice reading skills!

    Reply
    • Jenae says

      December 5, 2015 at 8:03 am

      Thanks so much, Kristina!

      Reply
  3. Renee Kelley says

    April 24, 2018 at 3:38 pm

    Use to teach herbivore, carnivore and omnivore

    Reply

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