Lay a proper foundation for your child to become a successful reader by setting up hands-on reading games and activities like this fun and interactive word ladder. This Sidewalk Chalk Game is a great way to practice reading skills and fluency with your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, or first grade child.  This word family activity is simple, practical, and makes learning to reading fun! So head outside for this summer or spring learning activity!
Word Family Activities
Knowing the sound each letter makes is key to learning how to read.  Once your child begins to associate each letter with its sound(s), it is time to work on reading simple CVC words. Visual learners especially may enjoy learning to read with word families.  Word families are groups of words that contain a similar pattern. These predictable, rhyming words allow children to become more confident, fluent readers! Word family activities are a great way to get the practice preschoolers, kindergartners, and grade 1 students need to thrive! This Sidewalk chalk activity works with any word family; we used it to work on at word family.  Each word used in the word ladder ended with the word /at/.
Whether you are a parent, teacher, or homescooler – you will love that this word family game allows kids to actively practice reading kindergarten word family words while having fun. Kids learn best whent they are having fun! So head outside for this summer learning game or spring theme phonics activity today!
Word families for kindergarten
With some sidewalk chalk, head outside for some reading fun! Â The fresh air and movement involved in this reading activity will make reading fun for your child.
Supplies:
- sidewalk chalk
- word family reading list
Draw a ladder-like shape on the sidewalk and write a word containing the word family pattern you would like your child to work on in each space.
Sidewalk chalk games
Have your child begin at the bottom of the word ladder and read each word while moving up the ladder.
Encourage your child to make the first sound /b/ and blend it with the word family, /at/ to make the word /bat/. Â Move to the next word….
For your kinesthetic learners, add some fun movements to the activity by having them jump, crawl, hop on one foot, etc. up the word ladder.
Once they reach the top, do a little jig if you’d like, but the work is not done yet! Â Now it is time to turn around and build fluency and speed by reading the words now moving down the ladder.
Literacy Activities
Continue this activity with other word families, such as /-in/, /-op/, /-am/.
It is a simple reading activity that can be used to encourage reading skills all throughout the day. Â Do it once in the morning, after lunch, and before dinner! Â Have fun moving and learning! Â I think this activity will appeal to all kinds of learners– especially those that do best with movement and patterns.
Word Family Activities
Looking for more fun, free printable word family printables to make learning fun for preschoolers, prek, kindergartners, and first graders? You will love these clever ideas and resources:
- Super cute Snowman Word Family Spinners
- Christmas Phonics Activity for working on phonics skills with word families!
- Pumpkin Pie Word Family Activity
- Turkey Word Family Sort
- Word Family Sliders Free – lots of styles to print in color or black and white
- Pumpkin Word Family Slides Printables
- Easter Egg Word Families Activity
- Word Family Flowers Cut & Paste Worksheets
- Transportation Word Family Slides Printables with blends
- Hershey Kiss Word Family Activity
- Free printable Rhyming Word Families Kindergarten
- Lion Words Family Printable – read and clip
- Planting Carrot CVC Words worksheets
- Carrot Word Family Worksheets
- Blowing Bubbles Word Family Activities
Phonics Activities
- Cut-and-Paste Trigraphs Worksheets
- Color and Read Book with Trigraphs List for practicing trigraphs pr, squ, and str
- Free Readers to Color and Read MORE words from Trigraphs List
- thr words Playdough Mats
- Hot Cocoa Phonics makes fun winter activities for kindergarten
- Phonics Beginning Sounds Worksheets are a NO prep kindergarten worksheets to improve phonics skills.
- Christmas Phonics by making a Christmas trees by putting together words with the same beginning sounds.
- TH Worksheets – re-usable activity to help kids work on th sounds
- Mitten Beginning Sounds Matching is a fun Winter Activities for Kindergarten –
- Spring activities Kindergarten for working on consonant blends with digraph blends
- Ice Cream Themed Digraph kindergarten summer activities – sneak in some summer learning to improve reading skills with these cute, educational puzzles.
- Clip Cards are a fun Consonant blends activities – help kids learn to combine letters to make digraph sounds
- Spring Initial Blends Worksheets – super cute activity for helping kids master blends
- Graph a blends activities for 2nd graders – fun combination of math and language arts
- Color by blend worksheet – this is a fun way for kids to practice learning blends
- Consonant Blend Cluster Spelling Mats – hands on activity learning blends
- Kindergarten Word Families Sliders – help kids practice sounding out blends in words with this fun, transportation themed reading activity for early readers.
- Reading and Writing qu words Worksheets
Free printable kindergarten worksheets
With so worksheet for kindergarten to look through, I want to make sure you find some of our most popular printable kindergarten worksheets. So start scrolling and enjoy!
- Alphabet Worksheets – students will work on tracing letters from A to Z with these free printable, black and white printables.
- Writing Number Worksheets – children will practice tracing and writing numbers 1-20 with these blackline pages.
- Word Family Sliders
- Start out your day with this kindergarten calendar activity
- Make practicing math FUN with these free printable Math Crafts
- Work on discrimination with these Letter Recognition Worksheets
- Practice number recogition, letter recognition, and reading sight words with these Color by Code Worksheets
- These Alphabet Printable Hats are hugely popular and perfect for working on phonemic awareness and a letter of the week curriculum in kindergarten classrooms or homeschool.
- Learn vocabulary as you make your own Kindergarten Alphabet Mini Book has a book for each letter from A to Z.
- Alphabet Coloring Pages – adorable black and white sheets that feature ahuge capital letter with images that start with the same beginning sound for kids to color inside – great way for kids to build vocabulary
- Help kids explore the world around them with these fun, hands on kindergarten science ideas!
- Kindergarten Crafts arranged by month of the year!
Worksheets for kindergarten
- 50 Books for Kindergarten Book List – Books for Kindergarteners to read themselves
- Kindergarten Calendar Printable
- Days of the Week Worksheets
- Kindergarten Spelling Words – add a vowel practice
- Free Kindergarten spelling words Printable
- Hoppy Frog Math Game (addition within 10 and addition to 20)
- Lots of fun, free money games for kids
- Free Measurement Worksheets
- Goldfish Kindergarten Subtraction Games
- Roll to 100 Counting Game
- Shape Puzzles Printable helps kids learn 2d and 3d shapes with free printable shape puzzles!
- 100s Chart Battleship Game
- Flower Shape Kindergarten Math Crafts
- Kids will have fun as they color and learn with these Ordinal Number Worksheets
- Spring Kite Skip Counting Craft
- Pirate I Spy Worksheets
- Crack the Code Worksheet Pages for Kindergarten and first graders
- Playdough Subtraction Smash free printable math activity
- Dinosaur Theme Kindergaten Math Worksheets
- What Comes Next Kindergarten Math
- Free Ice Cream Math Worksheets
Kindergarten Phonics
- Short i cvc worksheets cut and paste pdf
- Short E CVC Words Booklet
- Crack the Code CVC Word Worksheets
- Short a CVC Word Book
- Crayon CVC Words Activity
- CVC Word Puzzles Free Printable
- Word Family Sliders Free – lots of styles to print in color or black and white
- Blowing Bubbles Word Family Activities
- Monster Match CVC Word Activity
Kindergarten Activities
- Free Printable Seasons Worksheets w/ Free 4 Season Printables
- Large Printable Weather Unit for kids
- Rain Cloud for Kids experiment and free worksheet
- Water Cycle for Kids Printable Book
- Lots of weather printables to help kids learn about weather terms while epracticing math and literacy skills
- Grab this free printable 5 senses preschool printables to explore the senses of sight, taste, sound, smell, and touch
- Human Body human body playdough mats – lots of choices to learn about various systems of the body including simple for preschoolers, skeletal system, organs, muscles, nerves, and more!
- EPIC, Life-size Human Body Project
- Amazing 5 Senses for kids lesson to explore with hands on activities, videos, books, and more!
- Try this Jelly Bean sense of taste activities for preschool experiment.
- All About Me Kindergarten (Expanding horizons social studies unit to teach kids about themselves, My Family, My Neighborhood, My Community Unit with lots of ideas & resources
- Where do I Live – free printable project and fun idea for explaining how you live in a house, on a block, in a city, in a state, etc.
- Free Community Helpers Coloring Pages – over 20 simple coloring pages exploring jobs
- Community Helpers Printables Wheel
- Handy Community Signs Worksheets
- HUGE Pack of Firefighter Worksheet to practice a variety of skills with kids 3-8
- Free Printable Community Helpers Matching Game
Plus don’t miss our sister site – Kindergarten Worksheets and Games . This site containes all FREE printables and is dedicated soley to Kindergartners! Looking for more fun, creative ways you can begin your free homeschool? We have over 1,000,000 pages of FREE Printable Worksheets including resources for: pre k worksheets, kindergarten worksheets, 1st grade worksheets, 2nd grade worksheets, 3rd grade worksheets, 4th grade worksheets, 5th grade worksheets, 6th grade worksheets, and more. Plus see our history lessons for kids, hands-on countries for kids, printable math games, language arts worksheets, sight word worksheets, free alphabet printables, and cvc word activities for kids of all ages! And our hugely popular Pipe Cleaner constellation activities
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