Snug as a Bug in a Rug – a Hide and Seek Reading Game

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ALuv has been working on Short u words.  In the Word Sorts for Letter Name-Alphabetic Spellers, the next sort after short o is short e. But in the south, short e is one of the hardest and most confusing short vowels for kids to pronounce. Plus, the authors included words that end in -en; which is pronounced more like -in . So we have skipped the short e for now.  We will come back to it though.

After introducing the short u word families of -UT, -UG, and -UN by matching the pictures with the words, we played a hide and seek reading game called Snug as a Bug in a Rug  in our pocket chart with the UG family.

I honestly don’t know where I printed this game from years ago and I could not find its source no matter what keywords I googled, so I re-made the printables for you to download. {Free download is at the end of this post.}

Snug as a Bug in a Rug Hide and Seek Reading Game

1. I placed a few of the UG rugs on our pocket chart.  (I’ve included a list of UG words on the download.)  I chose to include a few words with blends to see how he’d do since he did so well on the short a & o assessment.  He needed a little extra support to read them, but he did it!  I’ve included a list of UG words on the download.

2. He closed his eyes and I hid the “bug” behind one of the UG rugs.

3. I gave him clues as to which word it was behind and he had to find it.  If my first clue was general, I kept getting more specific until he had narrowed it down.  Here were some ways I phrased the clues:

• The bug is behind the word /h/-/ug/ (separating the onset from the UG rime)
• The bug is behind the word /r/ /u/ /g/ (separating each individual sound so he had to listen for the phonemes)
• The bug is behind a red rug
• The bug is behind a word with 3 letters
• The bug is behind a word that starts like this /sl/

4. Once he found the bug, he had to read the UG word.

Of course, he wanted to take his turn hiding the bug from me.  I think he enjoyed doing that more.  I was really surprised how well he did giving me clues like I did for him.  He was enjoying it so much that NJoy wanted to take a turn hiding the bug, too.

More Word Family Activities

• Short Vowel Word Study App – Level 1 is full of word family fun!
• Word Family Blackout
• Word Family Matching Game
• BOB Books Word Family Printables
• LEGO Word Family Sorting

{Download this FREE printable game HERE.}

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky