This is a fun and engaging way to have your kids practice building and blending words! You’ll need plenty of paper, and letter stamps – you can use letter stamps with ink pads, foam letters and finger paint ( you can find foam letters at the dollar store!), or you can even use letter stickers.

  1. Have a list of words ready – high frequency words and/or words pulled from a book or selection you are reading with your child that have letters and sounds you have already introduced.
  2. Tell your child that you will write a word or show them a word card for them to make their own by stamping/painting/sticking it onto the paper. To make it more challenging, simply tell your child that you will be calling out the word for them to make – then if they need help, you can write it or show them the word card.
  3. Once your child makes the word, have them blend each sound together from left to right slowly before going back to quickly read the whole word.
  4. Have your child go back and quickly read all of the words they made when finished for some extra fluency practice.
  • Here’s another way you can change this up once they got the hang of it: Call out the letters that make a word for your child to stamp/paint/stick, then have them try to blend the word together and see if they can read and tell you what word you spelled out for them. They love this part!
  • Note: You can use irregular words (words that are exception to the rules: ex: the, was, one) with this activity, but tell your child to read them without trying to blend the sounds together.