After-school learning for my son has to be interesting and usually hands on. So, I try to incorporate themes of high interest into every subject. This year he is in first grade. At the beginning of this year his class is learning how to spell words in word families. This particular week the spelling words are from the “it” family and we are covering one of his favorite birds the OWL. I searched the Internet for FREE OWL themed word family printable s and activities to no avail! I mean, I saw Tons of wonderful word family activities from all my favorite bloggers but nothing owlish. Then I search through gobs of owl activities and printable s but nothing about word families. The solution had to be to come up with a whole new owl word family on my own or spend money on printables that could only be used few times. I decided to do this:
First, I drew a picture of an owl on cardstock (which I later copied and used for several other activities).
Next, I cut two slits about half an inch apart and the length of a toilet paper roll into the drawing. I put the slits on the body of the owl but you can put them anywhere on the card stock picture.
My son usually doesn’t like to color with crayons but this was an OWL!! He took extra care to color in the lines.
Then, I cut a tp roll in two parts, one part just a tad bit longer than the other. I also had to trim the roll more for it fit within the slits easily. It needed to spin without causing the paper to tear. Now my son was able to paint the roll parts.
We let the the rolls dry. After they were dry, I helped him tape the rolls end’s together. All that was left to do was to write the word family ending “it” on one of the rolls and consonant beginnings on the other roll. Wah La!! He had his OWL word family activity to use again and again.
If you would like to try this for yourself there are many sources for FREE OWL COLORING PAGES out there. Here is a link to one of my favorite bloggers.
The Afterschool House 