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Reading Activities for Kids

Fun Word Scrambles for Kids

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I love word scrambles. Actually, I adore all word puzzles. Do you?

They’re fun, low-prep, and great for taking on the go. What could be better?

Over the years I’ve been creating some fun word scrambles for kids and are listing them here for a one-stop shop. I know you’ll find some that your kids will love.

Word scrambles are so much fun! Here's a fun selection of holiday and everyday printable word scrambles for kids. Just download, print, and fun solving these word games.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

Word Scrambles for Kids

Are you looking for a fun holiday word scramble? I’ve got you covered. Click through the titles to download and print each word scramble.

Valentine’s Day Word Scramble – Unscramble ten Valentines and love themed words.

St. Patrick’s Day Word Scramble – Ten fun scrambled St. Patrick’s Day words.

Easter Word Scramble – Unscramble these ten Easter and spring themed words.

School Supplies Words Scramble – Unscramble these common school supplies. This word scramble is perfect for back to school time!

Halloween Word Scramble – Solve these nine spooky mixed-up words.

Thanksgiving Word Scramble – You can find a fun Thanksgiving Word Scramble in this fun printable activity pack.

Spelling Word Scramble – Check out this post to find out how to make your own word scramble based on your weekly spelling words.

Family Word Scramble – Unscramble ten words that are all about families.

Word scrambles are so much fun! Here's a fun selection of holiday and everyday printable word scrambles for kids. Just download, print, and fun solving these word games.

I love word scrambles for their simplicity. You don’t need to buy a bunch of supplies because all you need to do is print and go.

They’re perfect for classroom use, waiting rooms, quiet time, or any time your kids need to wait. I don’t know about you, but I would rather have something to do while waiting instead of just sitting and staring into space. So take along a word scramble. It’s perfect!

Keep coming back for more fun word scrambles for kids. I’ve got many more in the works!

Word scrambles are so much fun! Here's a fun selection of holiday and everyday printable word scrambles for kids. Just download, print, and fun solving these word games.

You may also enjoy some of these fun printables for kids:

Road Trip Word Search for Kids at Crayon Freckles

Fall Themed Mazes at Powerful Mothering

Dot to Dot Printables for Children at 3 Boys and a Dog

Print and Color Farm Animal Bookmarks at Sunny Day Family

Easy Ways to Encourage Reading Comprehension at Home

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Can we talk parent to parent here for a moment?

Do you ever feel completely lost when you try to help your kids when their school work? Like, how can you help them when they’re learning to read?

There’s more to reading than just decoding words. You’ve got to string all those decoded words together into sentences, paragraphs, and stories to find out what they’re trying to say.

I know that and I know you know that. Even our kids know that.

But, sometimes when kids are learning to read and struggling to sound out words, the meaning behind those words gets lost.

So, how can you, as a parent, help your child with reading comprehension?

Easy ways to help with reading comprehension during read aloud time at home.

Over the years, I came to realize that read aloud time was more than just a cozy bonding time with my kids. There were so many benefits. One of which was helping my kids with reading comprehension. My girls’ teachers confirmed this for me every single year.

That’s why I kept up our read aloud time even when my girls started reading more and more themselves. Even now, when they’re both comfortable reading their own chapter books, we still have read aloud time. I love sharing some of my childhood favorites with them this way.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

How does read aloud time help with reading comprehension?

When your kids are listening to you read, they’re no longer trying to decode those words. The struggle to figure out a word is set aside and they can relax and enjoy the story.

You can read and enjoy more difficult books. On their own, your child may still be working on simple BOB Books, but when you read together, you may be enjoying Charlotte’s Web.

Your kids are free to focus on understanding the story. That’s a powerful advantage.

Easy ways to help with reading comprehension during read aloud time at home.

How can I help my child work on reading comprehension?

It’s simple. Just talk about the story, ask questions and let your kids ask questions. Tailor your questions to the story.

Ask about the main character. Then, ask about the setting and the plot. Did your kids pick up any details?

Try one of these questions:
Where does the story take place?
Who (or what) is the story about?
What happened at the beginning of the story?
What happened at the end of the story?

Take it further and help them make inferences about the story:
Why do you think the character did what they did? (Add in details from the story you’re reading.)
How do you think the character felt?
What do you think happened next?

Notes from the trenches: I found that adding “do you think” to my questions helped my kids relax and think about the question. With the simple additional words, I let them know that there wasn’t a right or wrong answer. I just wanted to know what they thought. It made a world of difference.

Keep it conversational and natural. You certainly don’t want to turn read aloud time into a chore, because the most important thing is to keep it enjoyable.

Reading aloud is so beneficial and so much fun. Keep it up. You’re helping your kids so much.

You’ve got this.

Easy ways to help with reading comprehension during read aloud time at home.

You may also like one of these posts:

Keeping the Lines of Communication Open with Your Child’s Teacher at Creative Family Fun

Connection After School: The Questions You Should Be Asking at Creative Family Fun

All-Star Sports Reading Pointers

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Have you ever watched a kid use their fingers to track reading across a page?

It’s such a natural thing and a great way to train their eyes to track the words on a page.

Fingers aren’t the only thing you can use to track the words. You can have a little fun with homemade reading pointers. These All-Star Sports Reading Pointers are perfect for little sports fans that will make reading so much more fun.

Hit a home run with these simple All Star Sports Reading Pointers that will help your new reading keep their place on a page.

Disclosure: Thank you to CraftProjectIdeas.com for providing the supplies to make this project. The idea is my own. This post also contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

These reading pointers are so easy to make. I made this set in just a few minutes. It would be so easy to make enough for an entire classroom.

Supplies Needed

Colorful craft sticks
Sports-themed foam stickers
Black marker

CraftProjectIdeas.com has a great set of sports stickers that are perfect for these reading pointers.

Hit a home run with these simple All Star Sports Reading Pointers that will help your new reading keep their place on a page.

How To Make Your Reading Pointers

You’ll need one craft stick and two identical stickers for each craft stick.

Take the backing off one sticker and put it at the top of your craft stick. Make sure you plenty of open areas on your sticker. (See the picture above.)

Place a second stickers directly on top of the sticky side of your first sticker sandwiching the craft stick in between. Press tightly so that the two stickers stick together tightly.

Hit a home run with these simple All Star Sports Reading Pointers that will help your new reading keep their place on a page.

Use your black marker to add a fun and curvy dashed line all the way down your stick.

That’s it! Your reading pointers are ready to use.

Hit a home run with these simple All Star Sports Reading Pointers that will help your new reading keep their place on a page.

If you’ve got a young reader at home, it’s very beneficial to keep a supply of reading pointers.

Keep them accessible so your kids can use them whenever they feel like they need them.

It’s a great way to help them practice reading and gain confidence in their reading ability. They’ll have a little help along the way.

They also easily double as a bookmark and they’re reading and waiting for the next time they pick up a book.

Hit a home run with these simple All-Star Sports Reading Pointers that will help your new reading keep their place on a page.

 

If you enjoyed this post, the above picture is perfect for sharing on Facebook. Or, you can pin the picture below.

Hit a home run with these simple All-Star Sports Reading Pointers that will help your new reading keep their place on a page.

 

You may also like one of these posts:

Stacking Rhyming Words

Punctuation Stickers

Magic Wand Reading Pointers at Creative Family Fun

Fun Reading Pointers You Can Make or Buy at Creative Family Fun

Valentine’s Day Literacy Activities

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The closer it gets to Valentine’s Day, the more I want to add hearts to every activity.

Don’t you?

If you’re like me, and wanting to plaster everything with hearts, I’ve found a great selection of fun Valentine’s Day literacy activities to help your kids have fun while they practice reading and writing.

Practice reading and writing with one of these fun Valentine's Day literacy activities perfect for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details. 

Reading

Use candy kisses to spell your name, sight words, or spelling words with this simple Candy Kisses Game from Fantastic Fun and Learning.

Mix in a little science with this Melting Hearts Word Search activity from Inspiration Laboratories. You can hide sight words or spelling words in these hearts.

Practice your spelling words, or even sight words, with this Valentine’s Day Spelling Activity from Coffee Cups and Crayons.

Deliver some hearts while you practice reading with this fun Sight Word Delivery Game from Growing Book by Book.

Practice sight words, words families, or spelling words with this fun hanging words activity based on the book The Day it Rained Hearts from Inspiration Laboratories.

Get out your fancy heart doilies to practice reading with this Valentine’s Day Word Families activity.

Practice homophones with this free heart matching game from This Reading Mama.

Read a great book for Valentine’s Day.

ABC Creative Learning has a great list of 25 Valentine’s picture books.

You can find 10 Valentine’s books that will appeal to boys over at Embark on the Journey.

If you’ve looking for chapter books, Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas has a list of Valentine’s chapter books for kids.

Practice reading and writing with one of these fun Valentine's Day literacy activities perfect for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Writing

Practice writing letters, sight words, or spelling words with this simple Valentine’s Day sensory writing tray from The Imagination Tree.

Use these Valentine’s Story Stones from Creative Family Fun to write your own Valentine’s Day stories.

Combine art and writing. Create a batch of these Kindness Heart Postcards from Toddler Approved and write notes to send to family and friends.

Create this gorgeous golden heart book from Imagination Soup and use it for creative writing. It’s the perfect place to write some Valentine’s poetry.

Make I Love Books from Fun-A-Day. This preschool activity can be easily modified for older kids by having the kids do all the writing themselves.

Have some fun with some kid-friendly Valentine’s Day Mad Libs found at My Sister’s Suitcase.

Don’t these all look like fun? Which of these Valentine’s Day literacy activities are you going to try with your kids today?

Practice reading and writing with one of these fun Valentine's Day literacy activities perfect for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade. #literacy #ValentinesDay #BetterThanHomework

You may also like one of these learning activities:

Punctuation Stickers: A Fun Punctuation Activity

Valentine’s Day Math Activities

Punctuation Game: Cut & Graph Sentence Strips

10 Fun Ways to Practice Spelling Words


Valentine Word Family Game

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I love to add a holiday twist to learning games.

It adds to the fun and can help make a reluctant kid eager to learn.

Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, I’m going to share some fun ways to incorporate the holiday into learning. We’ll start with a simple Valentine word family game that makes use of heart doilies.

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

I usually like to stick with supplies that I usually have at home to make a learning game. But, this time I made an exception. I spent a little bit of money on some heart doilies to make a fun activity even more special.

Supplies Needed:

Heart doilies
Red or pink construction paper
Circle punch
Black Marker

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

Make your Valentine Word Family Game:

Decide on the word families you want to work on. Choose the ones that your child is working on in class or select something you see they are struggling a bit with. If you’re not sure where to start, here is a great list of word families I refer to quite often.

Use your heart doilies for your word family base. Use the black marker to write a word family on each doily. Don’t do too many, 3 or 4 word families should be plenty.

Next, make your game pieces. I have a circle punch, so I just cut out four circles from my construction paper for each word family. If you don’t have a circle punch, you can cut out small squares or even small hearts.

Write a word on each circle from each word family. I had four circles, so four words for each word family.

An example would be: -est family, nest, rest, test, best.

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

Play the game:

Give your child the word family doilies. Turn the paper circles upside down and mix them all up.

Choose a paper circle and read the word. Put the circle on the correct word family doily.

Keep playing until all the paper circles are on the correct doily.

Extend the fun:

Use just the word family doilies and see how many words you can write down for each word family.

Play the game with more than one kid. Have each child take turns turning over a paper circle.

How would you use this Valentine Word Family Game?

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

If you enjoyed this post, you are welcome to share the above photo on Facebook, or the photo below is perfect for Pinning.

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game. #Literacy #ReadingGame #ValentinesDay #BetterThanHomework

You may also like one of these reading games:

Word Family Four Square 

Stacking Rhyming Words

Word Family Sort at Creative Family Fun

Word Family Snowball Toss at I Can Teach My Child