Words in Words (a Literacy Board Game)

Our youngest son is doing a great job on his journey to becoming a fluent reader. I've been surprised to see some of the words that he gets hung up on, though. When he knows the sight word "ate," for example, I expect him to read "gate" with relative ease. Not so, though. 

This activity is an effort to help him see words inside of words, which sometimes (not always) will be just the cues he needs to read them more quickly.

What You Need to Play
2 players
2 different game pieces (we used LEGO minifigures)
Free PDF of the cards and game board (download it here)
Dot stickers (or tape)
Heavyweight card stock (8 pieces)
Scissors or paper cutter
Marker

Assembly
Download and print the 8-page PDF file on heavyweight card stock. 

Cut out the game cards so that each has a word at the top and blank rectangle at the bottom.

Fold the cards in on themselves and write the word that's inside on the outside in marker. Use a dot sticker (like what you'd use for pricing yard sale items) folded over the top edge to seal each closed.

Put these in a pile or bowl.

How to Play
Both players put their game pieces on the START circle. The youngest player picks a game card, reads the word in marker and tries to figure out what word is inside that word (without scrambling the letters!). Once they have a guess, have them open the card.

If the word they discovered inside the main word is on the inside of the card in red, they move their game pieces the number of letters in that word. For example, if the child selects the card with the word 'seen' on it, and says 'see' is the hidden word, they'll move their game piece three spaces since there are three letters in the word 'see.' 

If there are multiple options on the inside of the card, the player can only move their game piece the number of letters in the word they guessed (so if they said 'an' and not 'ant' in elephant, they move TWO spaces, not three).

The player to reach the finish first is declared the winner.

I was shocked at how well my youngest son did with this and how much his older brother also enjoyed playing with him. If we're going to keep the enjoyment going, it looks like I'll have to make even more cards!

Word Family Board Game (free printable -at, -ug, -op, & -ail practice)

Our kindergartner is starting to read. It's incredibly exciting. I cannot tell who's more proud: him or me. To introduce him to word families, I made a fun little board game.

Download your copy for free from Google Drive here. Print on heavyweight cardstock. Double the weight of the arrow spinner by folding the paper over and gluing two plies before cutting it out. Punch a hole with a nonconventional hole punch and attach the spinner with a brad. Find different game pieces for each player.

Playing is easy. The youngest player starts. They flick the spinner and land on a letter. They'll move their game piece from the START words to the first real word that can be made with the letter they spun and the word ending (e.g. if they spin t, they'll move to -op since that makes the word top). 

Kids will love trying out the combinations of letters and word endings and giggle at the nonsensical words they make in the process. 

Play alternates between opponents. If a player lands on the SPIN AGAIN, they'll do just that and spin again to get a letter. They'll then move their piece twice to form the first two words that can be formed with the letter spun and the word endings on the board.

The first player to reach the final square on the board is declared the winner. When we played, that was my 6 year old! 

Want a great book to pair with this game? We've been reading these flip-a-word books. They're great for beginning readers and a perfect introduction to word families!

Sight Word 5-in-a-Row {free printable}

Sight word BINGO. Hm. You're probably thinking haven't she already shared this activity? 

Well, yes, I have. (See here.)

But since (I'd like to think) my design skills have improved and boy No. 2 has different sight words to practice, I've recreated new cards.

Download five playing cards and the call cards free from Google Drive here. There's also a blank card for you to add your own sight or vocabulary words!

This was a much easier way than flash cards to get our 6-year-old to practice his sight words. 

You're on a Roll - CVC Dice Game

Our almost six year old is starting kindergarten in less than a month. Where oh where did the summer go? We're still working on sounding out letters and words to reinforce his phonics knowledge.

I made a fun CVC activity for him to practice phonics, blending sounds, and early reading skills.

The game has three DIY dice, two with consonants and one with the vowels.

He rolled them all and with help we checked to see if he'd made a real CVC word or a nonsensical word. If one die rolled "YOU CHOOSE," he could use the other two letter rolled and choose the third letter to form a word.

My son is a long way from thinking of words on his own or knowing their spelling. I gave him a list of words for him to reference. 

We made a game out of it and took turns rolling to see which one of us (him or me) could make more of the CVC words on the list, circling each as we rolled it.

This free download is the third iteration of the activity. The first two ways to play were WAY more complicated than they needed to be. All you need is a kid to show you how to take the game you designed and play it the best way - the easiest, most fun way. I should have consulted him first!

Download the game here. Print on heavyweight cardstock, cut out, score the lines and fold your dice. I used a low-temp glue gun to glue the tabs together.

CVC Words Hunt

Those little consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words are a great way for kids to practice phonics, listening for beginning and ending sounds, early reading skills, and spelling.

I snapped some photos and made several cards for my son to hunt, sound out, and spell.

The words I used are:

hat

pot

pen

car

jar

box

map

can

Download the cards I made for free from Google Drive here.

How to Play

I cut the cards for four words and scattered the cards throughout our living room, using scotch tape to secure them to the tv cabinet, ottoman, fireplace mantel, etc.

Here's the instructions I gave our 5-year-old.

You'll be making four words. Each word has four cards, one of which is a photo. Find a photo first, then find the letters in the word by looking at the color on the cards.

Once you find four cards of the same color, try to put the letters in order to form the word for the object in the picture.

Listen to the beginning and ending sounds to put the letters in the correct order.

Note: The pink- and red-bordered cards may look similar, depending on how your printer ink. To avoid confusion, don't use those words together.

When my son was done, I gave him four of Trader Joe's sour gummies. Our kids rarely get candy so this was a special treat, and because the gummies come shaped like the letters T and J, they seemed to be the perfect prize for all his word work!

Prefix Remix (Printable Game)

Having just made the Super Suffixes game, it was all too easy to use the same design to make prefix playing cards.  We played with these cards a little differently, though. Truthfully, you can use these cards any way you want to. There's no right or wrong - just do what is fun for your kid.

Download the free five-page PDF from Google Drive here. This is how we played.

I put the prefix cards in a pile face down between us and shuffled the word cards well. I dealt us each six word cards.

We turned over a prefix card and the cards in our "hand." We checked the words and removed whatever cards had words that logically fit with the prefix (anti- and freeze, for example) from our hand, each starting individual piles.

Wild cards are like free points, so long as the player can think of a logical word using the prefix that's presently turned over.

With that round complete, we drew how many ever cards we needed to start the next prefix with a total of six cards in our hand again.

Then the next prefix card was turned over and play continued in the same way until we had tried to make sensible words with all 12 prefixes.

To find out who made more words with prefixes, we counted each of our piles of cards. Just like with the Super Suffixes game, we both worked hard to convince each other that some of our prefixes and words made sense together. My son was very persuasive and ended up beating me 21 to 17.

To go with this activity, we read Brian P. Cleary's book Pre- and Re-, Mis- and Dis- What is a Prefix?

Super Suffixes Game

It's been far too long since we played a language arts game. This one works on suffixes, those endings that are added to a word or a root and change its meaning (e.g. high becomes highness, with the -ness suffix).

I made a simple game for my son and I to play. (Download a free 5-page PDF from Google Drive here.)

There are two sets of cards. The first is a full-sized set of 12 cards displaying different suffixes and their meaning.

The rest of the cards are smaller and contain words or roots.

When my 3rd grade son got home from school we reviewed what suffixes are with a little help from Robin Pulver's book Happy Endings. This fictional tale is chock full of suffixes. It's a language arts lesson built into a story, which ranks right up there as my favorite genre of children's books.

After we finished Pulver's book, we played Super Suffixes.

After shuffling both sets of cards, we flipped three of the large suffix cards over. Then each of us drew five cards from the word deck.

We looked at the words we'd drawn and tried to match them with any of the three suffixes. Each player earns a point for every suffix matched with a word. We made matches like happy and -ness, and disgrace and -ful. I could have named this game silly suffixes, because some of the words we tried with our suffixes were downright goofy. "Mom, is weightness a word?"

"I don't think so, son."

"Aww, man." (giggling)

A wild card can be played anywhere. When played, though, a player must come up with their own word (i.e. ANY word) using that suffix.

When we had matched all of the cards from our hand that we could, we kept any cards we were unable to match, drew enough cards from the word deck so we had 5 each again, and flipped over three new suffixes. We played four rounds and kept score to determine who won.

This game is a great way to boost a child's vocabulary, help them deduce the meaning of words with suffixes, and grasp a greater appreciation for the English language.

Put Your Hands Together for Conjunctions

Conjunctions are joiners or connectors that bring together words, phrases, and clauses. A few of these important words follow:

And

But

Or

Nor

So

For

Until

After

Because

Since

To teach my son about how these words are used, I created an activity we'll be able to do again and again, with a template I'll use for practicing other skills too.

To get started I printed several pages of these right and left hands. Download a 1-page PDF here.

I used colored papers, but that's not necessary. After they were printed, I laminated and cut them out (including the hole inside the hand); yes, this is a bit of a pain but with a small craft knife, it went rather swiftly.

Once my hands were done, I cut some small strips of paper. Now I got busy writing parts of sentences on right and left hands with a fine-tip dry-erase marker. I also wrote the conjunction that would join them on the blank slips of paper. Here are some of the sentences I used:
During the race I swam and ran.
I got today's mail and put it on the desk.
Mom was tired after exercising at the gym.
I stayed awake until the sun came up.
Molly hated peas because they never stayed on her spoon.
Do you want popcorn or peanuts?
I do not like broccoli so I chose corn instead.

By laminating, the dry-erase markers wipe clean making the hands reusable!

When my son came home from school we read a great book by Brian P. Cleary. I'm a huge fan of his Words are CATegorical series and this book delivered the same whimsical illustrations I expected with the simple, clear definition of conjunctions my son needed.

My son also watched Schoolhouse Rock's "Conjunction Junction" video; I remember it from when I was a kid. This little song is certainly handy (and mighty catchy too; my son was singing it later that evening)!

With the hands laid on the table, it was up to my son to determine which conjunction was missing and join the hands together by looping the paper with the conjunction through the hands and stapling it. My son made quick work of the task and was excited to have joined the sentence fragments with the correct conjunctions.

Next time, I might scramble the fragments to make the exercise more challenging for him. 

What Gets a Capital Letter? (Board Game)

It can be a real struggle to remember what to capitalize when you're eight years old. And since grammar doesn't stick like math does for my son, I wanted to find a fun way to help him learn.

The What Gets a Capital Letter game is a sneaky way to trick kids into remembering that the following are always capitalized:

Days of the Week.

Months.

Names of holidays.

Names of people and pets.

Names of places.

The beginning of a sentence.

The letter "I" when it is a word.

Download a PDF of the game for free on Google Docs here.

It's an easy game with very few rules. Game pieces (we used laminated photos inside binder clips) are placed on the START. The youngest player starts the game by drawing a card from the deck. He/she reads the card and identifies what in the sentence needs to be capitalized and why. Then, the player moves his game piece to the first occurrence of that reason on the game board.

For example, a player might draw the following card:

kiwi fruit is so delicious.

He/she would then say "kiwi needs to be capitalized; it's the beginning of a sentence," then move their game piece to the first blue box on the game board that reads "beginning of a sentence."

Now it's the opponent's turn. Play alternates between players.

If a player draws a "GO BACK" card, he/she must draw another card and instead of advancing based on the reason for capitalization, they'll retreat. If the player is too close to the start and there's no "months" box, for example, to move back to, their game piece remains in its place.

If players are near the end and draw cards with reasons for capitalization without any remaining boxes, they must still say aloud the correction and reason, but do not advance. The first player to land their game piece on the final "days of the week" box wins the game!

To accompany this game, my son read Kick Ball Capitalization by Michael Ruscoe. It covers many more reasons for capitalization in a very fun way!

File Folder Phonics and Letters

Learning letters has been a challenge for my little guy and while he's getting a fair amount of practice in preschool, it just isn't sticking.

Since I think it's equally important for kids to recognize the letters as it is to begin to associate the sounds they make with them, I decided we'd do a little extra work at home.

My mom, a retired elementary school teacher, supplied the idea for this genius file folder game. It's geared toward kindergarteners, but with some assistance can be ideal for PreK application too.

Before we got busy playing our "letters game," my son watched a great phonics DVD from Leap Frog. I'd recommend this for kids ages as young as two and as old as six.

This great file folder game is perfect for reviewing two letters and their sounds at a time. Kids have to decide which shapes contain pictures of objects that begin with a particular letter. It's simple and smart and SO helpful.

Download FREE from Google Drive:

A-M

N-Z + a blank template on page 23

Construction Option #1: 13 file folders

You'll need 13 file folders, 26 sheets of sticker paper (or office paper and glue), 26 sheets of heavyweight cardstock, and sticky-backed velcro. On the A-M file, print the odd numbered pages on cardstock and the even pages on sticker paper. On the N-Z file, do the same, but do not print page 23 (it's blank and you won't need it).

Now cut the letters and all the shapes from the sticker paper pages (or if the pages fit on your file folder, simply peel and stick the entire page, one page per side). Each file folder will have two letters. You can pick and choose whether you put the letters in alpha order (e.g. your folder could have A and B or O and T). Some phonics programs mix the letters, so feel free to do the same.

Now cut out the cardstock shapes and adhere velcro to the back and to the corresponding shape on the file folder.

Construction Option #2: 1 file folder

You'll need 1 file folder, 2 sheets of sticker paper (or office paper and glue), access to lamination, 26 sheets of heavyweight cardstock, and sticky-backed velco.

Print two copies of page 23 on the N-Z PDF file onto sticker paper. Either cut everything out, or if it fits, simply peel and stick to each side of the file folder. Laminate the folder. Now print the odd number pages on the A-M and N-Z PDF file (with the exception of page 23 which you already printed) onto cardstock. Cut out. Attach sticky-back velcro: 10 pieces of the fuzzy side to the shapes on the laminated folder and the hook side of velcro to each of the cardstock shapes.

Write the letters (upper and lower case) on the folder in the handwriting box using dry-erase marker.

To Use:

Give the child one folder and the shapes that correspond to each of the two letters inside. (I put the shapes in an envelope in the folder, which could be velcroed to the folder for storage.)

Remind the child what the letters are and the sounds they make. Have them determine where the shapes belong and attach them. For example, on and A-B folder, the child will have to determine if the apple in the yellow circle or the  baby in the yellow circle belongs on the A side of the folder; "Does it make the aw sound or the ba sound?"

My son really surprised me with this. I'm looking forward to making more of these folders for him.

To keep the letter/phonics work going, we read K is for Kissing a Cool Kangaroo. This book is a lot of fun for kids who can challenge themselves to find all the objects pictured that start with the letter noted in the text. 

Spin & Spell {Gross Motor Spelling Practice}

Spelling can be B-O-R-I-N-G. Practice consists of me saying the word and my son reciting the letters … blah, blah, blah …. yadda, yadda, yadda.

Recognizing that my son is a kinesthetic learner, I thought it might be fun to practice spelling in a more active way.

I still recited the words.

But what came next was a whole lot more fun.

My son took a turn with the gross motor spelling spinner I made, flicking the metal paper clip that I threaded through a brad inserted in the center hole.

Whatever it landed on, he did: spelling the word while doing jumping jacks, making arm circles for every vowel, or skiing down imaginary moguls one letter at a time.

This gross motor spelling practice exercised the body AND the brain, and it was fun too!

Download a PDF of the spinner here. Print on sticker paper or glue to a recycled piece of chipboard (e.g. cereal box). Cut out, punch a hole in the center, and use a paper clip and brad to make the spinner. Voila!

Pasta Apostrophe Catastrophe

Say that three times fast.

The apostrophe is SUCH a hard working piece of punctuation. To review how it's used in contractions and to show possession my son and I grabbed a great book and some elbow macaroni.

I wrote a fun story for my son about Punctuation Pete who acts out by stealing apostrophes from Marley's town. By showing kindness to him, the apostrophes are returned and grammar is restored to the city. Friendship mends the apostrophe catastrophe!

The story was segmented into 15 cards and the apostrophes were eliminated from the text. A number (i.e. 1, 2, or 3) was added to each card to indicate the number of apostrophes that are missing. I printed, cut apart, and scrambled the order of the cards.

Download a 5-page PDF of these segmented
story cards from Google Drive here.

Before all this grammar greatness could ensue, we read an incredible book, which served as the inspiration for this activity.

The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why You Can't Manage With Apostrophes! shows kids how the use (or lack of) an apostrophe changes the meaning of a sentence.

For example, one 2-page spread shows the difference between "Those smelly things are my brother's", where children stare and point to a pair of filthy sneakers, and "Those smelly things are my brothers", where a group of children with clothespins clipped on their noses run away from two young boys playing among dirty trash.

My son spent a long time studying the pictures and the sentences to really understand the way one simple punctuation mark could make such a huge difference.

After we were finished reading Lynne Truss' book, I pulled out the segmented story cards. With some school glue and dried elbow macaroni (the pasta apostrophes), my son added the missing punctuation. 

And then put the story in order as best he could.

This was a simple review of one very important piece of punctuation. It was fun too!

Popcorn Letters (Pre-K and Elementary Spelling)

I've been working hard to feed our boys healthier snacks and lately, there's no snack requested more than popcorn. I even whipped up some tasty cinnamon-glazed popcorn this weekend (MMMMmmm).

So when I saw Mrs. Jones's popcorn words, I was excited.

Instead of word work, though, I thought we could do some spelling practice.

I made an alphabet of letters on popcorn pieces.

I printed four sets of the popcorn alphabet, cut apart the letters, and grabbed a few popcorn buckets.

Now it was time for both of my boys to play!

Download a free 3-page PDF of the popcorn alphabet here.

LEARNING THE LETTERS IN MY NAME Popcorn Game (PreK)

For my just-turned-four-year-old son, learning the letters in his name has been a struggle. I've been itching to find ways to help make this fun. I took a piece of 8 1/2 by 11-inch office paper and cut it the long way, taping the short ends together so I had one long strip of paper.

Then, I wrote the letters in his name leaving a generous amount of space between each. Now, I grabbed only the popcorn letters that make up his name, wadded them up a little, and tossed them into a popcorn cup.

It was his job to pull them out, say each letter out loud (he repeated after me), and match the popcorn's letter with the letter in his name, placing the popcorn letters in piles on top of the handwritten name banner I made. He really enjoyed this game and the two books we read to go along with it as well.

SPELLING PRACTICE Popcorn Game (Elementary)

My oldest son toted home his first spelling list this week (the 2nd week of 3rd grade). While the list is shockingly easy compared to last year (they're implementing a new literacy program), I wanted him to get in the habit of studying spelling. The popcorn letters were the perfect spelling manipulative.

For his activity, I used a BIG popcorn bowl we had on hand and all the letters from four sets of the popcorn alphabet.

I wrote a handful of the words in his notebook and told him to pull the pieces out, trying to find the letters to spell each of the words.

Each word got a score - the number of extra popcorn letters that were pulled out before the entire word was spelled. One word only had 15, another 62! My son had fun counting and recording each word's score.

When he was done, we read The Popcorn Book. WOWZERS, there sure is a lot to learn about popcorn!

Proofreading with DIY Punctuation Stamps

What is it about stamps? I've known for years that the most mundane learning activities seem less of a chore when there's an ink pad involved (for evidence, check out our Missing Letters Mystery). Don't ask me why.

To practice punctuation, we reviewed seven punctuation marks: apostrophe, comma, exclamation point, period, colon, and semicolon.

In order to do this, we read Punctuation Takes a Vacation, a clever book about a classroom of students that get a taste of life without any punctuation. This is my favorite kind of children's book - non-fiction disguised as fiction with playful graphics and a creative storyline. I enjoyed it as much as my son did.

And just as importantly, it was the perfect complement to this activity.

I printed two pages of sentences with missing punctuation. Download them here.

Then I made some punctuation stamps.

These were surprisingly easy. I used six wine corks that I'd been saving for ages (a friend mailed me a gift and used them as packaging), six 1-inch wooden discs, 3mm craft foam, and a low-temp glue gun.

I cut the punctuation marks out of the foam, using a hole punch when possible to get perfect circles, and glued them to the wooden discs. Then, I glued each disc to a cork. NOTES: Make sure your stamps are the mirror image of your punctuation marks. Also, you only need one stamp for the comma and apostrophe.

When it came time to fix the missing punctuation on the sentences I'd prepared, my son was ready. He moved through them quickly, only stopping a few times to ask questions for help.

He happily stamped and stamped and stamped.