FUN Sidewalk Chalk Word Families Activities for Kindergarten

March 23, 2026
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Lay a proper foundation for your child to become a successful reader by setting up hands-on reading games and activities like this fun and interactive word ladder. This Sidewalk Chalk Game is a great way to practice reading skills and fluency with your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, or first grade child.  This word family activity is simple, practical, and makes learning to reading fun! So head outside for this summer or spring learning activity!

Lay a proper foundation for your child to become a successful reader by setting up hands-on reading games and activities like this fun and interactive word ladder. This Sidewalk Chalk Game is a great way to practice reading skills and fluency with your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, or first grade child.  This word family activity is simple, practical, and makes learning to reading fun! So head outside for this summer or spring learning activity!

Word Family Activities

Knowing the sound each letter makes is key to learning how to read.  Once your child begins to associate each letter with its sound(s), it is time to work on reading simple CVC words. Visual learners especially may enjoy learning to read with word families.  Word families are groups of words that contain a similar pattern. These predictable, rhyming words allow children to become more confident, fluent readers! Word family activities are a great way to get the practice preschoolers, kindergartners, and grade 1 students need to thrive! This Sidewalk chalk activity works with any word family; we used it to work on at word family.   Each word used in the word ladder ended with the word /at/.

Whether you are a parent, teacher, or homescooler – you will love that this word family game allows kids to actively practice reading kindergarten word family words while having fun. Kids learn best whent they are having fun! So head outside for this summer learning game or spring theme phonics activity today!

summer-school

Word families for kindergarten

With some sidewalk chalk, head outside for some reading fun!  The fresh air and movement involved in this reading activity will make reading fun for your child.

Supplies:

Draw a ladder-like shape on the sidewalk and write a word containing the word family pattern you would like your child to work on in each space.

summer-kids-activities-sidewalk-chalk

Sidewalk chalk games

Have your child begin at the bottom of the word ladder and read each word while moving up the ladder.

Encourage your child to make the first sound /b/ and blend it with the word family, /at/ to make the word /bat/.  Move to the next word….

For your kinesthetic learners, add some fun movements to the activity by having them jump, crawl, hop on one foot, etc. up the word ladder.

Once they reach the top, do a little jig if you’d like, but the work is not done yet!  Now it is time to turn around and build fluency and speed by reading the words now moving down the ladder.

word-ladder-learn-to-read

Literacy Activities

Continue this activity with other word families, such as /-in/, /-op/, /-am/.

It is a simple reading activity that can be used to encourage reading skills all throughout the day.  Do it once in the morning, after lunch, and before dinner!  Have fun moving and learning!  I think this activity will appeal to all kinds of learners– especially those that do best with movement and patterns.

 

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Kristina once thought of going into education, but changed her mind a few years in to her degree. Ironically, she now has her hands full as a homeschooling mother of four. With children of various ages from infant to 7, she shares a variety of educational and play activities for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and early elementary aged children on her blog,

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