'Scrabbled Eggs' - A Fun Word Family Activity for Kids
Transitioning to school at home is no easy feat for parents, trust us we know! Our philosophy is to try and make learning as hands on as possible for our kids. That's why we came up with this fun Easter themed word family activity.
All you need for this fun literacy activity is a set of StoryBricks, a baseplate (we used our StoryBricks Letter Board), and some plastic eggs. We took it a step further and put all of the activity contents in an Easter Basket just to add an extra touch of fun.
The 'Scrabbled Eggs' activity is very simple and works best for elementary aged kids, although it could easily be adapted for other ages (read on to learn more about those ideas). Simply stuff each egg with a specific word family ending (e.g. 'at', 'ig', 'an' etc.) and then three different beginning letters. For example, one of our eggs was stuffed with 'at' x 3 and then a 'b', 'm' and 's'.
Ask your child to pick an egg from the basket, crack it open, and see if they can make three different words from the word family. In this example the words would be 'bat', 'mat' and 'sat'.
Encourage your child to crack open another egg and repeat the process. As they search through the letters they are being challenged to recognize letters and identify letter sounds. Both of these are key early literacy skills.
Using a hands on approach for literacy learning has many benefits. It will help your child to be more engaged in the activity because they will be motivated to take part by the 'fun-factor'. Getting to crack open the eggs and solve the literacy problem was pretty exciting for our first grader.
This activity was also a great way to work on those all-important fine motor skills. Adding the StoryBricks and using the removal tool works little hand muscles pretty hard!
If you love this activity idea but have younger kids or older kids you can easily adapt it to make it more suitable. For toddlers why not simply include one letter from their name in each egg. Crack all the eggs open and see if they can arrange them in the correct order to spell their name. For older kids you could fill the eggs with random combinations of letters and challenge them to see if they can spell a word using all of the letters. Or perhaps make it into a points scoring game with a partner. The more letters you use the more points you get!
How do you like to make literacy learning hands on for your kids? We'd love to hear your top tips to help us through these long homeschooling days.
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Creative QT designs quality + innovative toys that declutter homes and inspire creative play. Founded by parents of five, Adam and Dana Sue Hinkle, Creative QT’s vision is to empower parents and encourage a culture of families that Make Time Together. All products are designed to enrich families’ lives through active, creative play and play based learning. Creative QT products are laboratory tested for compliance with CPSC requirements and are free of lead, cadmium and phthalates so you can play with confidence. So, go ahead … today is the day: be your kid’s hero.
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