Word Family and Color Slam – Back to School Basics

Back to School Basics posts review simple skills for preschoolers and pre-k students. Today I am sharing this simple word family and color slam game. We typically try and come up with games or activities that can work for both my son (entering pre-k this year) and my toddler daughter. This game actively kept them both involved and was a lot of fun!

Materials Needed:

• notecards in a variety of colors (we stuck to 4-5 colors)
• markers
• tape
• ball

How to play:

1. Write a variety of word family words on different colored notecards (we did -op, -am, and -at word family words since those are the ones we've been talking about this week)
2. Tape the words to the wall or ground with painters tape.
3. Call out a word and have your child try and find it and SLAM it by hitting it with a big ball. Do this again and again with each word.
4. Have your child choose the word he wants to hit and have him sound out that word and point to it. Then have him SLAM the word he chose with the ball. Do this again and again and let your child pick what words to read and which words to hit.

Toddler Version:

1. Call out different colors and have your toddler try and throw the ball at that color card. They could also just touch the cards with their hands to point out the colors.
2. For toddlers that are still learning their colors, have them throw the ball at any color card. Once they hit one, announce the color they hit and see if they can say the name of that color! Play again and again!

* You could also make this simpler for preschoolers by just putting alphabet letters on each card or simple sight words and have them slam the letters of the alphabet or the sight words!

The skills we practiced with the toddler were...

• learning color names
• identifying colors
• gross motor skills
• hand-eye coordination
• listening and following directions

The skills we practiced with my pre-kinder were...

• hand-eye coordination
• gross motor skills
• identifying letter names and sounds 
• blending/sounding out words
• learning simple -op, -at, and -am word family words
• listening and following directions

Nursery Rhymes are filled with word family words, so reading them is also a great way to introduce your child to these fun rhyming words!

Here are a few of our favorite Nursery Rhyme books that we love!

Do you have any other favorite activities to teach kids about word family words?
How about fun and active ways to teach kids their colors?

Have you missed any of our other Back to School Basics posts? Just click on the links below.

• Alphabet and Vowel Apples
• M&M School Bus Math

PS- Camp Mom is still in session... so we'll have some fun Camp Mom posts to share with you later this week. We are focusing on simple backyard science activities. 

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.