Printable Predictable Books

Hubbard’s Cupboard has some great printable predictable books as you work on word families with your child!  Check these out for -at and -an!

-AT BOOK LINKS:

• In My Hat (easy level-ALuv’s level)
• The Copycat(more difficult -at book)

-AN BOOK LINKS:

• Jan and Dan (easy level)
• Beach Plans (more diffiult -an book)

Word Family Rime List: I’ve also had a few questions regarding how a mama is supposed to know which rimes (chunks) to use for word family work.  There are several different online sources, but Hubbard’s Cupboard has a good list.  The word families are in ABC order; not the order in which you should introduce them.  It’s good to start with the simple short a families (CVC) such as at, an, ap, ag, and ad.  Chunks such as ack & and, etc. are more complicated and should be saved for later.  Anyway, check out this link.

More of -at and -an

Here are a few more things we did with -at and -an:

Made words with -at and -an chunks and beginning letters

Played “I Spy” with phonemes (or individual sounds):

After laying out all of his words on the floor, I would say, “I Spy /b/ /a/ /t/,” pausing about 1 second in between each letter sound.  He would blend the sounds together, say the word, and point to the correct word.  (Blending can be difficult for some children.  If it is for your child, you could adjust it by pausing less in between each letter sound.  You could also model how to blend them together until you say the entire word.)

Predictable Book: I Can See

This is a little book that I wrote to practice our -at and -an words.  We were also working on the sight words the and look.  I enlarged the pictures from our Words Their Way sort.  ALuv colored the pictures from the sort, cut them out, and after reading the text on each page, he glued the correct pictures down.  After doing each page, he went back and read the text.

Click here for the I Can See book (on the last page of this document are pictures from Google images that your child can color, cut out, and glue down).

I had to include one more cute picture I found in the archives.  He was so excited to see -at words he knew right in the title-imagine that!

Fun with -an and -at

One of the reasons I like Word Study so much is that it’s flexible.  In my opinion, it beats doing inflexible workbook pages any day.  See My Top Ten: Word Study (under Literacy Development) for some of the other reasons I like Word Study so much.  Here are some more activities we did with the –an and -at word families.

Just a side note: Word Study is meant to be a piece of the literacy puzzle.  A big portion of the puzzle is real reading with real texts.  One of the ways I help ALuv bridge between the two is when we get to an -at or -an word in our reading, I have him read it or I may just comment, “Hey, that was an -at word!”  I do the same thing with the sight word we’ve learned together.

Re-Matched Words/Pictures

We played a game as a variation of re-matching words and pictures.

I placed all the words and picture cards on our kitchen table .  We took turns.  On his turn, I would put a picture card out, say the name of the object pictured, and he would have to find the matching word.

On my turn, he would put out a picture card, say the object’s name, and I would have to find the matching word.  I would purposely mismatch them sometimes to make sure he was paying attention.

Leap Frog Word Builder

We have several Leap Frog learning toys that I rotate out on a weekly basis.

This is NJoy dancing with his absolute favorite one: Fridge DJ.

One of these is a Leap Frog Magnetic Word Builder.  (Ours is about 2 years old.)  I pulled out the letters a, b, c, f, p, m, n, t, & v.  I showed him pictures from his word/picture sort and he used the magnetic letters to build the words.  The great thing about this toy is that it is self-correcting because it reads the word out loud that the child has spelled.  If it is spelled incorrectly, your child will know.

Four Corners (a variation of a tic-tac-toe game I played when I tutored in reading)

ALuv’s Gameboard                                             The Happy Winner!

Using our dry erase boards and markers, each of us picked four words to write on our boards.  All the words were shuffled and put in a pile facedown.  ALuv and I took turns picking the top word off the deck, reading it, and looking for it on our board.  Whoever crossed off all their words first was the “winner”.

Making Words

1. Sorted all the –at and –an words:  Notice that the -at and -an chunks are written in a different color than the beginning letters.  This helps to bring attention to the patterns.
2. Applied Patterns to New Words:

Mama: “If you were spelling a story and wanted to spell the word Dan, would you use the –at chunk or the –an chunk to help you spell it?”  I did this with several more words that we had not studied, yet.  This helps a young reader/speller to see that the patterns they know can apply to other words as well.

Short a Word Family Review

Here is a recent activity ALuv and I did to review the short a families we’ve studied (off and on) since September.  After recording all his answers, ALuv had to tally up how many real and silly words we made and compare the difference between the two (I love to integrate as much as possible).

I will be posting some of the things we did as we worked on each word family, but I thought I’d start with what is fresh on my mind.  I do have a template for this one, but have to figure out how to post it on my blog–I know, I’m a “baby blogger” :).

This is a picture of  Spin and Write Wheels, something I adapted to help ALuv review his short a families.  The beginning consonants are in the left wheel.  The 4 different short a rimes (at, an, ap, & ad) are in the right wheel.  Yes, we are using a pencil and a paper clip as our spinner.

ALuv recording what he has spun n + ap = nap