Teach word families with word family houses!

Looking for a hands-on printable for teaching word families?  Check out our word family houses!

(This post contains affiliate links.)

My word family houses were one of my very first printables here at The Measured Mom®. These little gems are wonderful for helping new readers crack the code of sounding out words!

If you’re teaching a new reader to sound out words, I highly recommend using word families instead of groups of unrelated words.

What are word families?

Word families are groups of words that share the same ending.  For example, the words cat, fat, and mat all belong to the “-at” word family.

Why teach reading with word families?

1) The English language is complicated.  A bit daunting for someone just learning, wouldn’t you say?  Word families help beginning readers find predictable patterns within words.

2) Knowing word families makes sounding out words easier because instead of laboriously sounding out each letter, the reader reads the first sound and attaches it to the familiar word family name.  When reading the word cat, for instance:

Instead of reading /k/ /a/  /t/,  the child learns to read /k/ /at/.

These word family houses are easy to print and assemble!

If you print on colored cardstock and laminate, you get a durable printable that will hold up through a lot of use.

1. Print each house on a single piece of cardstock.

2. Cut out each house and wheel, being sure to cut into the house to cut out the window.

3. Laminate.  (For this demonstration, I put just one house and wheel in the laminator, but I can fit two houses and two wheels on a single piece of laminate.)

4. Cut out the pieces and use a sharp tool to punch a hole through the black dots.  Assemble with a brass fastener for some hands-on reading practice!

Get the original versions for free

If you’d like my original sets, you can download them individually for free.

• Short a houses
• Short e houses
• Short i houses
• Short o houses
• Short u houses

Get the new and improved houses in a bundle pack!

As I stated above, these were one of my first printables. Since then I’ve learned a few things (such as creating in MS Publisher is waaaay easier than making printables in MS Word).  I re-created all the word family houses with a better font and layout.

Plus, I’ve added more simple CVC words (such as cat and hat) and included fewer words that begin with blends and digraphs (such as flat and chat), making these truly perfect for beginning readers.

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(Non-U.S. residents, please purchase in my TPT store.)

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