21 Free Word Family Printables to Help Beginning Readers
Storytime Standouts features 21 free word family printables for kindergarten, grade one and homeschool
Whether supporting my own children as they learned to read, tutoring kindergarten and/or grade one children who are struggling with reading or presenting my Beginning to Read program, I have always been a great fan of teaching Word Families.
Introducing the concept of Word Families helps kindergarten and first grade students understand that elements of words are the same. Three words may have different parts but they may also be very alike. Once a child learns to decode the word “RING,” he can be encouraged to substitute the beginning sound and read, “SING,” “KING,” or “BRING” with word family materials.
The idea of substituting a beginning sound (or an ending sound) can be introduced long before a child is learning to read. Phonemic Awareness activities will encourage preschool and kindergarten children to play with sounds. A young child with good phonemic awareness skills will grasp the idea of decoding Word Families very quickly.
If you are working with a child who is not reading at the expected level, we think that phonemic awareness should be one of the very first things that is assessed.
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Step 3 – Choose from any of our 250 free downloads, including these free word family printables.
10 Printable Word Family Flip Books for Kindergarten and First Grade –
An easy way for children to learn and practice the an, at, ed, ell, ick, ing, op, ot, ug and uck word families
I use these Word Family flip books in my Beginning to Read program. I find they are terrific for encouraging young children to see the relationship between BAT, CAT, FAT, MAT, PAT, RAT and SAT.
For good readers, it is very obvious that bed, fed, led, red and Ted are related. They all end the with “ED.” For a beginning reader, the relationship between these words may not be understood. When children create and use a Word Family flip book, they will notice the relationship between the letters and the words and they quickly learn to substitute the beginning sounds. Before long, they discover that they can read several words quite easily.
Word family flip books are easy to make* and can be tucked into a pocket or a backpack for extra practice at home or on the road.
We really recommend that children make the flip books themselves.
10 Word Family Flip Books
10 printable Word family flipbooks, great learning resources for children in kindergarten and first grade.
Printable PDFs for the an, at, ed, ell, ick, ing, op, ot, ug and uck word families
How to Make a Word Family Flip Book
Instructions for assembling a word family flip book for beginning readers. Great for kindergarten and first grade.
Free Word Family Printables – Words with Pictures for Kindergarten and Grade One
I also use these Word Family printables in my Beginning to Read program. For children who are not quite ready to decode words, the picture clues provide additional support.
Short A Word Family Printables for Beginning Readers
The «All» Word Family
Free — all word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «An» Word Family
Free -an word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ap» Word Family
Free -ap word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «At» Word Family
Free -at word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Am» Word Family
Free -am word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
Short E Word Family Printables for Beginning Readers
The «Ed» Word Family
Free -ed word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ell» Word Family
Free -ell word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «En» Word Family
Free -en word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Et» Word Family
Free -et word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Est» Word Family
Free -est word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
Short I Word Family Printables for Beginning Readers
The «Ig» Word Family
Free — ig word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ip» Word Family
Free -ip word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «It» Word Family
Free -it word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ill» Word Family
Free -ill word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
Short O Word Family Printables for Beginning Readers
The «Og» Word Family
Free -og word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Op» Word Family
Free -op word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ot» Word Family
Free -ot word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ock» Word Family
Free -ock word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
Short U Word Family Printables for Beginning Readers
The «Ub» Word Family
Free -ub word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
The «Ug» Word Family
Free -ug word family printable for young readers in kindergarten and grade one.
You will find our selection of free writing paper for kids here , our free printable picture dictionaries here and all of our homeschool, preschool and kindergarten printables together with parent/teacher resources here.
We invite you to follow Storytime Standouts’ Word Family Board on Pinterest
When kids are learning to read, one way to help make it easier is to teach kids what is known as word families. A word family is a CVC (consonant vowel consonant) word that ends in the same letters, like “at” or “ig.”
Once kids recognize the word family, they can easily pronounce the letters in front of the word family, speeding the reading process and making reading a lot more fun. These word family flip books are a fun DIY solution to word families, and they are as fun to make as they are to use.
It’s an exciting time to watch as your emergent reader progresses! Before my daughter entered kindergarten, she knew a handful of sight words, but would get frustrated attempting to read aloud. As the school year went on, the list of sight words she knew grew.
As she progressed, she became more confident in reading and writing. Now, she attempts to sound out new words while reading and gets less frustrated. Learning word families definitely helped! Plus, my kids like saying rhyming words in succession.
Note: Our school refers to sight words as Word Wall Words. They kept sight words and other high frequency words posted on the Word Wall and used it throughout the school day. Visually seeing the progress as words were added was awesome. So, if your school uses a slightly different term, that is OK!
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Make these fun little flip books for your students and watch as their reading ability soars!
Materials:
- White paper
- Construction paper
- Permanent marker
- Scissors
- Glue
Directions:
You can make the word family flip books as large or as small as you like. I wanted my version to be small enough for little hands to use alone. I cut a standard 8.5 X 11 piece of paper into eights and used that as the paper for the word families.
Cut pieces of construction paper slightly larger than the letters that will be written on them.
Look up a list of word families and put the word family ending on the white paper, leaving a blank in the front for the other consonant letters.
Write the other letters that complete the words in each family on the pieces of construction paper. Stack them up and glue them to the blank space on the white paper. Only glue the top of each paper so that they can be flipped up or down to make new words.
When the glue dries, give the books to your kindergarten kids. They will be delighted to play with them and it will help make reading a whole lot easier for new readers.
Here are some CVC words to get you started:
- big, dig, gig, jig, pig, rig, zig
- dip, sip, tip, zip
- bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat
- bug, dug, hug, lug, mug, pug, rug, tug
- cop, bop, hop, mop, pop, top
We hope you and your child enjoy making and using DIY sight word family flip books. They are perfect for teaching emerging readers word families. As they flip through your DIY word family books, they will begin to recognize more words which will help as they learn to read.
More learning activities for kids:
- Melting Rainbow Preschool Science Experiment
- Dinosaur Counting Game for Preschool and Kindergarten
- Mini Eraser Robot Counting Mat Activity for Preschoolers
Do you have a beginning reader or a child interested in reading? These Easy, DIY Word Family Activities Booklets are perfect to start. They help children become more confident readers and work on reading fluency. Learning and working on word families will also help them to become better spellers.
Word families are words that have a common pattern, for instance, a different beginning letter but the same ending letters. When looking at the ideas below think about how you can add different prefixes or suffixes to the base.
Word Family Activities Book Materials:
Construction Paper
Index cards
Scissors
Sharpie
Stapler
With the construction paper, cut out squares around 2×2”. 4-9 squares work best!
Pick a word family blend.
A few good word blends are:
- -ed
- -at
- -ad
- -ar
- -an
- -it
- -un
- -ug
- -am
- -ap
- -ag
- -et
- -ip
- -up
- -ake
- -ink
- -ain
- -ish
- -ack
- -all
- -ock
- -ank
- -ing
On the index cards, write out the blend. On the construction card, write out the beginning sound letter or blend.
Staple the construction cards to the index cards, so kids can flip through! Combine the beginning sound with the ending sound to make a word.
Use this DIY word family activities book to practice fine motor skills (flipping the booklet), sight-reading sight words, and sounding out words.
They can be made with shorter blends for beginner readers or longer ones for older children.
If you are looking for a great reading program, we love the All About Reading program. It teaches everything your child needs to know in a fun, engaging way with a lot of hands-on activities.
EXTEND THE ACTIVITY: In Dr. Seuss style, add pretend words such as “lat” “zat” and “dat” to practice sounding out words!
A few early readers that we always love are Bob Books, AlphaTales and the All About Reading Readers.
If budget friendly, DIY activities are your thing Click here for more ideas.
Why Everyone Should Use All About Reading
10 Reasons Why Reading is So Important
The Best Kindergarten and Preschool Penguin Activities
Are you using our short vowel books from our Learn to Read Curriculum? I often get questions on how to assemble them, so here’s a dedicated page to help!
*Please read this post carefully before you email me, as most of your answers will be in this tutorial. Thanks!
**I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
How to Print & Assemble your Word Family Books
1. Save the file to your computer.
2. Open the file with the free, updated Adobe Reader.
3. From Adobe Reader, print just the word family pages from the file front to back* on cardstock**.
*Once opened up, print the book pages front to back, making sure you check “flip on short edge.” If you miss this step, the pages will not print correctly!
**I use cardstock because it’s less flimsy and the color doesn’t bleed through. If you want to laminate the book, that would make it even more durable and kids can also mark in it with dry erase marker.
4. Stack the FLAT pages on top of each other, making sure your pages will be in the correct order when they are folded down the center in landscape orientation. They WILL NOT be in order unless you put them in order!
When it’s stacked AND folded correctly, your book will be in this order:
- The front cover with a blank page on the back
- A title page with “Words I Can Read” on the back
- The pages of the story in order 1-6, page numbers are at the bottom of each page
- One extra page at the back of the book with “www.thisreadingmama.com” and the word family featured under it
5. Staple the book together with a long-armed stapler to create the book look.
I hope that helps clear up some confusion when it comes to printing and assembling the books.
Grab a copy of our FREE Word Family Books OR
get the ENTIRE Learn to Read BUNDLE!
Enjoy teaching!
~Becky
W is for Words.
We have an early reader in our house, a gal who just can’t get enough of words to say, words to read. Our phonics flip chart is our friend!
We made it last fall and with the help of that book, my daughter can sound out and read short words like a champ. However, she’s slow when it comes to sounding out words with blends. 
Time for a new phonics chart! These are so easy to make and to use. They take mere minuets to make and it’s nice to listen to her chant out her “words” while I am doing the dishes or whatever. Our new flip chart focuses on blending (or chunking) words.
How to Make a Word Families Book
- We used a pack of the 3×5 index cards that come on a binder.
- Cut all of the cards so that roughly 2/3rds of the card was on the right and 1/3 on the left.
- Then I used this list of most common word families as discovered through the book, Kid Writing, and added them in the top cover.
- I also wrote the endings on all the cards in the chart.
Then I added the first letters and beginning blends. Some of the blends we added to our chart included: ab, ad, bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl, br, cr, dr, fr, gr, tr, th, sh, ch, wh, sch, sk, sn, sm, sp, st, str, sw, kn, etc.
The majority of the words in the English language can be created from the blending of these “word families” and the various “beginning” combinations.
This is a great way to help kiddos understand how to break down and “chunk” their words.
To make this a bit more challenging, ask your kiddos to use the word they created in a sentence. It is fun, not all of the blends “mix” to make real words and it’s cute to hear the definitions and “sentences” Lena uses with her pretend words.
Add a kitchen timer, and my 5 year old is now homeschooling herself! If only math were as easy!
If you are learning sight words, check out our favorite way for kids to independently practice those!
Your Child Can!
Do you have any reading tips or any favorite manipulatives that you have made to help your kiddos learn?
Rachel is the founder of the blog, One Crazy House. She is the co-author of 101 Kids Activities that are the Bestest, Funnest Ever! and The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas with her husband and six children.