As our younger readers progress through the first grade, their texts begin to include longer words. Sometimes, these are compound words, words that are made up of smaller words. Because compound words look long, young readers will sometimes shut down. This is what happened with ALuv {currently and the end of 1st grade}.
We’d already worked through breaking apart some two-syllable words and he was doing well with those, but I needed something a little extra to boost his confidence in breaking apart those longer compound words. So I created a few compound word games for him. These were such a big hit for him that I had to share.
*The pictures & free printable in this post have been updated since 2013. Find the free printable at the end of this post by clicking on the teal download button.
{Sorry that some of the images are blurry. My camera isn’t working right now, so I used my phone for a few of these.}
Compound Words Matching Games
The cards are simple, but there are several different games you can play with them, like:
matching up the separate words to the compound word such as lady + bug = ladybug.
I placed all the compound word picture cards so we could see them and we played a matching games with just the words. The goal was to make real words {words that matched the pictures}. At the end of the game, the person with the most pairs was declared the winner.
we came across a few funny ones as we played, which got some good laughs in!
A couple of other compound word games might include:
Matching compound word pictures: water + fall = waterfall. For this game, you flip over 3 cards on your turn.
Matching compound words only. This is more of a challenging game. Again, flip over 3 word cards on your turn, trying to match 2 individual words with the correct compound word. Example: wind + shield = windshield.
The most important part of learning to decode is connecting what kids learn out of context with in context reading. Now when my son gets to one of those long and “scary” words; I gently remind him, “That’s a compound word and you can break it apart into smaller words.”
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Popsicle Compound Word Puzzles
~Becky
Love this, Becky! Beautiful printable!
Could I have the free printable? Compound words. Can’t find the download button.
Scroll down. It’s a teal download button that says, “Click here to get your free printable.”
This looks fun! Downloaded and ready for action in the fall:-)
Awesome! You’re so organized, already thinking about next fall!
Hi Becky, I love your Compound Word picture game? I was just wondering do you have template that I can use? I would like to do all the compound words into pictures as well and would like to keep it the same. Template to type sight words and print them as well.
Thanks,
Lucy
I could email you a completely blank template via a PowerPoint document, if you’d like.
Thanks so very much! Great quality!
Thank you! 🙂
Thank you! Its such a great printable!
You’re welcome! 🙂