Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Paint Chip Word Families

I'm sure you've seen them all over Pinterest...paint chip ideas galore! Last week I went to Lowe's to look at paint samples (for a home improvement project) and was thrilled to find paint chips with squares already punched in them!  I thought it would be cute to make something like this, but punching the squares would be kind of time consuming...good news for us, Valspar paint has made it easy! I grabbed a few extra paint samples and headed home to make these:
I fired up my Cricut and cut several letters to create the word families. (The black letters are cut at 1" using the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge.) After they are laminated, I am going to cut them apart on the white line. I made strips of letters for the children to slide behind the square to make words. I haven't created a recording sheet yet, but there are several ways to differentiate this activity. For now, I put the word family on the bottom of the strip, but they could choose any letter strip and see how many real vs. nonsense words they make, practice reading CVC words,  or keep a record the words they read. We all know what an important part onset rime word families play in developing reading and writing skills.
 Thanks for checking in and have a great day!