Early Literacy Game: Chaining Changing Words

This one is a little harder than the games we’ve highlighted here before, but it’s a lot of fun once you get the hang of it!

Like all of the games we feature on Hello Cortland, you can adapt this one to your child’s ability level as they progress.

Chaining Changing Words

Ability level: early readers

Directions: It’s helpful to grab a piece of paper and a pencil for this one, but if you happen to have a chalkboard, dry erase board, letter tiles, magnets, or stickers—those would all work great, too.

Get the game started by selecting a closed syllable word. The following are called “closed syllable words” because they have a vowel followed by a consonant that closes off the vowel sound.

Here are a few examples of closed syllable words: bat, bit, bun, fib, fun, fin, jab, kin, rat, rib, sob.

Once you have your starting word, then the fun begins. Have your child change just one letter at a time of the starting word to create a new word, and write it next to the first. Continue this chain of words until you you run out of words!

Here’s an example: dog > dig > big > sit > sat…

Want to up the challenge and focus more on sounds? Ditch writing the words out and just say them aloud to practice phonemic awareness.

Benefits: This one builds on your child’s knowledge of words to up their phonemic awareness. By swapping out letters and the letter’s accompanying sound, your child can learn how much a word can change with just one letter.

Be sure to follow along to catch the next game. In the meantime, have fun! If you would like more information about other fun early literacy games, check out sightwords.com.