Word Family Paint Chips - Word Work

I have been seeing these word family paint chips on the home school blogs and loved the idea.  The Snail Trail Blog is where I originally found the idea. As teacher's are, we love to "steal" ideas when we see a great one.  I took it one step further to ensure my students actually were reading the word.  They have to draw a picture to go with the words.  This means they should only be working on one strip per day at the Word Work center.

I housed them in a shoe box that looks like a drawer (yay for reusing something for free!).  I placed an example of what I wanted them to do on top, labeled the drawer, and placed the word families and worksheets inside.

I only have the short vowel families of a, i, o, and some e in there right now.  Changing this center will be fairly simple.  All that will be needed is replenishing the worksheets and adding more sets of word families as the students learn them.   For organization, I placed numbers on the back of the paint chips and on the bag to keep the sets together.  I also wrote the word family on the letter strip so the students will know what letters go with which family.  Nonsense words are ok with me, but for this activity I really wanted them making real words.  I can't wait to try this out!

Word Family Paint Chip worksheet free download!
Word Family Paint Chip Example for the top of the box free download!

Total cost of this center - almost nothing, everything was free or things I already had at home. Yay!

ENJOY!