Now that Strawberry is becoming more and more aware of words and sounds and even starting to sound out consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, she was very excited to try a flower-themed word family picture sort.
Strawberry loves flowers. The beautiful springtime is finally showing us tiny green buds and she cannot wait to see the blooms. For this activity, Strawberry said the name of the picture on each flower. Then, she found the matching short vowel pot to put it in. Using mini-flower pots from the gardening center and popsicle sticks and clothes pins made this word family picture sort into a multi-dimensional hands-on activity.
Playing the Flowers Word Family Picture Sort
Since Strawberry is new to word families, we did one short vowel sound at a time. So, first we started with the 5 “short a” flower pots and the 15 picture flowers that correlated. At another time, we attempted the others. I have five flower pots (word families) for “short e” and “short i” as well, with four flower pots (word families) for the “short o” and “short u.”
What a fun activity this turned out to be!
Although I attached the first few word families to popsicle sticks, I found I was running short on them. It was just as fun to use clothes pins or even nothing (just the images of the flowers) to sort the flowers into the correct cups.
Preparing the Flowers Word Family Picture Sort
Here are the things I used in our activity.
- Word Family Picture Sort Printable
- Popsicle sticks or clothes pins
- Mini-flower pots (this is the kind I used)
- Glass gems (to balance the flower pots)
- tape (to attach the flowers to the sticks)
I also realized I could attach the pots to a file folder and make these in to portable activities!
My daughter loved the 3-dimensional aspect of it because she learns best with something in her hands, though!
Get the Flowers Word Family Picture Sort
Get this printable at my shop, TeachersPayTeachers, or Teacher’s Notebook. Click on any of these links to see the list of words and word families included in this product.
[…] I like how we can focus on one short vowel sound at a time with these word houses. Soon she’ll be ready for mixing up words, but for now, it’s nice to keep the vowels clearly understood. See also our recent spring-themed flower word family sort. […]