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📚 Word Families: a Reading Superpower

If you’ve ever watched a child slowly sound out every single letter in a word, you know how hard early reading can feel. Now imagine that same child suddenly recognizing patterns and reading multiple words with ease and fluency, that’s the magic of word families. Word families are groups of words that share the same ending pattern, like cat, bat, hat, and mat. While they may seem simple, they play a powerful role in helping children become confident, capable readers. What Are Word Families? Word families are sets of words with the same ending sound (often called a “rime”). For example: - -at family: cat, bat, sat, mat - -og family: dog, log, frog - -an family: man, fan, pan, can By learning just one pattern, children unlock the ability to read multiple words. Why Word Families Matter So Much 1. They Turn Struggling Readers into Confident Ones Instead of decoding every word from scratch, kids begin to recognize familiar patterns. When a child learns -at, they don’t just learn one word, ...

How to make a Quick Simple Butterfly

As I mentioned in a previous post, I really like the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so much so that I’ve read it to my kids quite a few times. They’ve also read the Moonlite edition, played The Very Hungry Caterpillar game, watched the video short on YouTube and listened to Michelle Obama read the story. 

Needless to say it is a favorite and they can easily spot and identify a caterpillar and butterfly. It was no surprise then, when one morning when I was showering, I heard my 3 year old screaming with delight ‘Mommy, Mommy butterfly!’ 

Hungry Caterpillar game
The surprise was that the screaming and excitement lasted a full 10 - 15 minutes. This made me think a neighbor had just gifted them a new butterfly toy.


When I finally got dressed I heard the full cause for excitement. An orange butterfly got trapped in our screen door and was fluttering around for their little viewing pleasure, until their Dad freed it. 

Their excitement was so palpable that I had to build on the moment and create some simple one dimensional butterflies to add to their learning fun. 

My 3 year old's butterfly art and craft
My 3 yr old's butterfly art work

Here’s what we used to make our very own butterflies:

Materials 

  • Coloured Card stock paper 
  • Coloured popsicle sticks
  • Crayons
  • Coloured wool
  • Scissors
  • Glue 
  • Googley eyes
  • Your Imagination!

Steps

1. Paste the popsicle stick on the card stock paper

2. Draw a big number 3 on both sides of the stick.

3. Draw two antennas at the top of the stick and paste two googly eyes or dried peas. 

4. Colour and decorate with crayons, glitter and wool!

My 2 yr old's butterfly artwork



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