Spelling Halloween Words with Beads
Periodically, E asks to work on reading. She’s great at figuring out beginning and ending sounds, but the whole sounding out business is still rough for her. I know she’s just not completely ready, so I wouldn’t dream of pushing it, but when she asks, we just work on it a little, until she loses interest again.
One of the activities we’ve done around this interest a while ago was playing with some CVC word play dough mats I’d made for her {click here to see the post and download the free printable if you’re interested}.
At this point, she recognizes a few CVC words from going over them a few times as well as the names in our family and a few other random words, but she’s not “reading” unknown words.
Consequently, today’s activity isn’t about reading the Halloween words we used {although “cat” and “bat” happen to be among the words she recognizes}. It’s about playing with the letters, reviewing sounds, and just having fun around a specific learning goal with a seasonal theme. There’s also some fine motor practice and a sensory component!
If your child is ready for more, you can definitely extend the activity appropriately. {Also see the notes on the different versions of the printable at the end of the post.}
(E was 4 years and 10 months old.)
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Materials for Spelling Halloween Words with Beads
- Halloween words printable {download below}.
- Alphabet beads. {We have a Melissa and Doug set, but when I was trying to find a link for you, I was only able to find this one that has white letter beads instead of the colored ones in our set; looks like they’re only half the fun 🙁 }
- Halloween cookie cutters (optional).
- Play dough in Halloween colors (optional).
- String for a necklace and extra beads to separate the words (optional). {Ours are from the same Melissa and Doug set that had the alphabet beads.}
I set up the activity for E with the “intermediate” version of the printable. I had bat, cat, spider, and pumpkin cookie cutters and used black and yellow/pink homemade play dough with them. I randomly stuck the letter beads into the corresponding shapes. {Can you spot the mistake I made? I didn’t see it until E asked me where the missing letter was…}
I explained my idea and E got right to work.
She dug the letters out of the play dough shapes
and placed them on the words on the printable.
We talked about the letters, sounds, and complete words. She noted that pumpkin and spider are very long words, and we counted how many letters the words have.
When we were done with the printable, E started taking off the alphabet beads and made a necklace out of them. She makes at least one necklace a day right now from whatever materials she can get her hands on, so I extended my original idea by capitalizing on this interest and adding the string and extra beads to separate the words.
Awesome 🙂
After that, it was free for all play dough play 🙂
Ready to get the printable and try this with your kids? Great!
The printable contains three versions:
- The one we used in our activity has upper and lower case letters and images to match the words. E is a pro at matching upper and lower case letters, so it wasn’t a problem that the alphabet beads are all upper case.
- If your child needs more help matching the letters on the beads and the letters on the printable, you can use the version with all upper case letters. It also has the images to match the words.
- The third version only has the words in mixed case (no images).
Click the button to download the Halloween words spelling printable!
Looking for more things to do with alphabet beads? Frugal Fun for Boys has an Alphabet Beads Busy Bag. If your child can spell words independently, try No Time for Flash Card’s more advanced and very customizable Spelling with Alphabet Beads activity.
If you’re interested in other literacy printables, check out my printables page!
Want to teach your child to read but don’t know where to start or how to proceed? I Can Teach My Child has an awesome eBook that will help: I Can Teach My Child to Read!
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