Making Words

This is a simple phonics activity to try at home with kids who already know some of their sounds. It can be easily adapted to suit different abilities. Many children find the physical part of putting pencil to paper off putting when it comes to writing words but manipulating letters and moving them around to make words more appealing.

Set Up

For this I used the green card leaves from our April activity box. I wrote various letters on the leaves. You could also write digraphs on one leaf together ie sh.

To start off with I let M have free reign with the letters. I didn’t give her any instructions and waited to see what she wanted to do with them. She instantly tried to write her name and then also create other simple CVC words.

After a while i challenged her to write a word with one of the sounds she had recently learnt. i - e as in bike. Then we decided together to see how many different words we could make. F also took an interest in the letters, so with her I wrote only two sounds on the leaves and together we sorted and said the sounds as we found them. This is a simple phonics activity which can be used again and again. Add new sounds as they learn them and challenge them to practice writing words independently.