We are learning about rhyming words and word families!

I'm always looking for new ways to teach different concepts and I love to give children ownership of their own learning. I've recently been thinking about how to teach the concept of rhyming words (or word families) in an interesting way. While I was drinking at a local coffee shop and stacking up the used cups I came to think that these could be used for this purpose!

So I took two cups from my picnic supplies at home. I used one cup to write the ending sounds or word families on such as 'og' and 'at'. I then used the other cup to write the beginning sounds I wanted on e.g. b, m and c as seen in the photo below.

 

I then inserted the two cups together to make words. The cups can then be twisted around to form new words that rhyme and belong to different word families. For instance in the photograph below the c can be twisted upwards to join 'ap' to make 'cap. I think children would enjoy making their own versions and deciding on their own rhyming word endings and starting sounds. The activity would be able to address both rhyming words and word families, sounding out CVC words, and also looking at nonsense words as not every combination would make a real word. This would allow children to think about both the sounding out of words and also the meanings of words as they could talk about whether the word they make is real or not.