Word Family Spinners (from Paper Plates)

The other day I shared the flashcard game BANG! as a fun way for your beginning reader to practice sight words ~ those high frequency words that are essential for fluent readers to know at a glance.  Today's game addresses the phonics aspect of early reading and helps kids focus on the letter sounds within a word.  By changing the beginning sound in the word, but keeping the ending the same, children are able to practice "sounding out" groups of rhyming words (often called word families).

These little spinners are super easy to put together and they're great phonics practice for home or the classroom!

These spinners have the word families -an, -at, -am, and -ap

Here's what you'll need:

* two sets of paper plates (one small and one larger)

* brass fasteners (brads)

* scissors or an exacto knife

* Sharpie

Here's what you'll need to do:

1.  Poke a hole in the center of each plate ( I found it helpful to stack the smaller plate on the larger one and then poke the hole so everything lines up)

2.  Cut a small window to the right of the hole on the smaller plate using an exacto knife or scissors.

3.  Write the word family ending next to the window.  Here I used  -ap

4.  Next, stack your plates together and fasten using your brad.  Then, write the first beginning sound on the bottom plate through the window.

5.  Slowly rotate the top plate to expose an empty window, and continue writing new beginning sounds.  For the -ap word family, I wrote the letters c, l, m, n, s, t, fl, cl, and sn. 

Now it's ready to go.  First, have your child read the ending on the top plate.  Work together to add the beginning sound in the window and read the first word.  Then simply rotate the top plate to read other words with the same ending.  In the example I've shown, you'll be able to read cap, lap, map, nap, sap, tap, flap, clap and snap!  It's great phonics practice and a great confidence booster to be able to read one word, then sound out eight more.  Make a bunch of spinners for all the different word families and your child will be amazed at how many new words they can read.

** NOTE **

* I found some great lists of word families (and additional resources) HERE!

* You may want to start with single sounds in the window, then move on to blends like fl, sn, etc.