Now that my daughter (age 5) 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.
She loves flowers. The beautiful springtime is finally showing us tiny green buds and she cannot wait to see the blooms. For this activity, my daughter 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.
Since she is new to word families, my daughter 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.
Here are the things I used in our activity.
I also realized I could attach the pots to a file folder and make these into portable activities!
My daughter loved the 3-dimensional aspect of it because she learns best with something in her hands, though!
Get this printable at my shop or TeachersPayTeachers. Click on any of these links to see the list of words and word families included in this product.
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