hoophugs313 February 7, 2025

Question #1:

1. A word family is a group of words that all share a common root word. For example, the words bat, cat, hat and sat all share the root word “at.

Question #2:

2. Word families help your child sound out multisyllabic words more easily and improve rhyming and spelling skills.

Question #3:

3.Familiarity with short vowel sounds will make learning word families easier.

Question #4:

4. If you need more resources for teaching short vowel sounds, please check out this previous post:

https://thevowelcoach.com/how-to-teach-short-vowel-sounds/

Question #5:

5. This video can help your child learn letter sounds:

Word Family Printables:

  • Find my Teachers Pay Teachers Short Vowel Word Family Products here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Printable-Short-Vowel-Word-Family-Word-Sorts-and-Memory-Games-13000759

Mat Man

I introduce word families with my friend Mat Man. Mat Man is a character from Handwriting/Reading without Tears, and he is assembled using the types of lines we use when we print letters.

Kids love Mat Man. My students get very excited when we use Mat Man in a lesson.

I teach online to kids across the country, so I must rely on drawing Mat Man. Here is the video I use:

After we draw Mat Man, I give Mat Man some props. Then we make a list of those props:

  • hat
  • bat
  • rat
  • cat

Mat, hat, bat, rat and cat all have “at” in common. They are all part of the “at” word family.

  • can
  • fan
  • pan
  • van

Man, can, fan, pan, and van all have “an” in common. They are all part of the “an” word family.

Here is a look at Man Man in the classroom:

You can purchase a Mat Man kit here:

https://shopping.lwtears.com/product/build-mat-man-kit/01t4V000007a32SQAQ

You can learn more about Mat Man here:

https://www.lwtears.com/blog/meet-mat-man?srsltid=AfmBOooEZ-GT4-ykIvHy0MtcWdfgj5SDcG4q_Bmf8zEO9p7EyLivq3DC

Here is one more Mat Man song that my students really enjoy:

After my kids meets Mat Man and have some fun with him, we move on to a word family rhyming activity. Do you remember this song from when you were in school?

Banana Fana Rhyming

After the song, we create some Banana Fana rhymes based on the word family of choice.

Word Search

Another fun activity is a root word word search. This type of activity gives the kids a chance to scan for little words inside strings of letters.

Here is a link to the word search generator I use:

https://www.education.com/worksheet-generator/reading/word-search/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA-5a9BhCBARIsACwMkJ6gZ0-yme4rIJ_WDMqmZDYD6VoSS1emAv2EDd8D3raXKMGnKK0Rf8waApG0EALw_wcB

My lessons always include songs and stories. Here are my word family favorites for short vowel word families: