We love resources that help our children learn, especially if they are essentially free! Here is a learn-word-families, DIY resource: Sliding word cards. We aren’t quite at the reading stage where they are useful, my daughter is still on three letter words but we are trying to transition into blending consonants. I know she loves manipulatives like our learn-to-read cootie catcher and I am hoping that these new sliding words might help engage her mind as her hands are occupied making new words.
These Word were super easy to make. These sliding word cards were inspired by the blogs, Preschool Playbook and The Snail’s Trail. Both of them have different types of word cards – they both write part of the word on the back and use the slide to change one or two of the letters, I wanted to make something where all of the letters are moveable, and where they “fit” together. We took the idea of using paint chip cards from Momma Snail, and and then adapted from there.
What you will need to make your own Word Slides:
- Thin and long paint chips and larger paint sample pages.
- Razor Blades (to cut the slits for the letter slides)
- Cutting board
- Permanent marker
Making the Slides in this Learn to Read resource:
I wanted the letter slides to have common beginnings and endings. We make our beginning blends blue, our endings green, our vowels yellow and random consonants red and purple. This makes it easy for me to find what I am looking for without a whole lot of digging.
The beginning blends used the letters: f, t, s, p, b, c, g. The second blue slide had the letters: l, h, r. With these cards we can now make the blends: fl, br, cl, gl, sl, pl, th, ch, sh, ph, br, cr, gr, fr, tr, pr.
The ending blends were: st, er, nt, ll, ck, ed, ly, ng. These encompassed the majority of endings to words.
There were also two colors of random consonants to make any blend groups that I missed.