Your child will create real and nonsense words with different letter combinations.
Learning Area(s): Reading and Writing
MATERIALS
printable eggs or paper cut into egg shapes and a marker
LET'S PLAY
Before the activity, prepare the eggs. You can either print the eggs or make your own. If making your own, draw several egg shapes and cut each egg in half the long way, so that you have a right side and a left side. On the left sides, write: sk, t, c, dr, p, pl, cr, br, m. On the right sides, write: in, op, at, um, od, an, ab, im, et.
Introduce the activity to your child by saying: “Today we are going to play a game called Scrambled Eggs. We are going to scramble these egg parts to make and read words. I’ll show you how to do it.” Take the left side of an egg and the right side of an egg, and put them together; for example, sk and op. “I’m going to sound out the word: /s/-/k/-/o/-/p/. I made the word skop! Skop isn’t a real word, but that’s okay. We can make real words or made-up words in this game!”
“Now it’s your turn to scramble the eggs! Let’s see which words you can make.” As your child puts the word parts together, encourage them to read each word. Keep scrambling the eggs for as long as your child is interested.
TIPS
- If your child is having difficulty reading the scrambled eggs, help them sound out the word and blend the sounds together.
- If your child wants a challenge, you might use a stopwatch to see how many eggs your child can scramble in 1 minute.
- If your child makes a real word, like skin, see if they can use it in a sentence!
- If your child can read the scrambled eggs easily, you can make the activity more difficult by adding more complex blends of letters and sounds to your materials:
- On the left sides, add: ch, sh, th, wh
- On the right sides, add: ash, ouch, itch