Word Family

Hello everyone :))), hope you had a wonderful day.

I would like to share an amazing idea I found on the I can teach my child blog - 

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/

She had this awesome idea of taken an paper towel role and make a out out activity to enhance her children reading skills. 

The objective of this tool is to present the word family, for example "ake", then the child will pull the inside board and will utter different sounds to make a new word. For instance: b + ake = bake; c + ake = cake; t + ake = take...and so on.

Materials that I used to create this tool: a flattened paper towel roll, glue, construction paper, wrapping paper, any type of cardboard to make the inside, and marker.

Instructions:

1st step: Wrap the flattened toilet paper with your favorite paper. Afterwards write on a construction paper the word family you decided to work, I used "ake", "all", "eat". I wrote the vowels in different colour. 

2nd step: Cut a piece of hard cardboard (I used a box from a 6 pack spaghetti that we bought) in 10 x 1.5 inches. Afterwards wrap it with your preferable paper. Then write the beginning of the letters on  construction paper and glue onto the wrapped cardboard. The word families I used were:

all - b (ball), h (hall), t (tall), f (fall), w (wall), m (mall), c (call), st (stall).

eat - b (beat), m (meat), ch (cheat), h (heat), n (neat), s (seat), tr (treat), wh (wheat), f (feat).

ake - b (bake), t (take), c (cake), sn (snake), w (wake), f (fake), m (make), sh (snake), l (lake).

3rd step: Put the beginning of the letter cardboard inside the word family paper towel roll, then your child is ready to have fun reading :))).

The blog I found the idea on, suggested to pass a length of yarn through the cardboard to avoid the child losing inseam paper. I did not do this because my son is very organised and old enough to understand that his studies are very important and he has to take care of his materials. However, in case you think you need to put it together the blog aforementioned has the instruction on how to do it: 

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/2011/06/word-family-pull-out-activity/

After doing this activity I may suggest that you ask your child to write down the words s/he read. There are also web sites to help the child improve their reading skills: 

http://www.starfall.com/

http://www.cookie.com/

http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

http://pbskids.org/read/

My son had already used this tool and he like it and managed to utter all the sounds to make his words. An incredible and inexpensive idea that I hope will inspire you too. Thanks :))).

Fabiana