Foam word families with Dr. Suess' Hop on Pop

I have been waiting to do this activity with Mini Me for a looooong time.  I don't know when or where I got the idea but I knew it would be fun.  Since the activity is to practice word families and letter sounds, I knew I couldn't push it. 

One night while reading a bedtime book, he tried to sound out a word.  We did it together and he was so thrilled that he read a word!  I knew this activity had to come out soon.  

The very next day we gathered our Hop on Pop by Dr. Suess, and our set of foam letters.  I preselected the letters and certain pages in the book that we would play with to minimize frustration.

First, we read the book.  

Then, I flipped back to my preselected pages and grabbed my ready-to-go pile of letters.  We looked in the book at placed the last two letters of our word family in order.  We sounded them out.  

Next, we looked at the book, talked about the pictures, and I said a word.  Our first page was the "ed" page with words red, Ted, Ned, bed, and Ed.  I said, "I wonder what letters we need to spell Ned..."  And Mini Me took the bait.  

We looked at the pictures and the words and continued to make other words in the word family.  

I cannot even describe how excited he was that he was spelling and reading.  This is what he looked like during our entire game:  

Next we did the cat, sat, hat, Pat page.  

After that we did dad, sad, had, mad.  You can really see him sounding out the word in this picture:

And after that we tried an "ig" word family that wasn't in the book - pig, dig, rig, big.

Each set we did was a success and MIni Me quickly learned how to remove the initial letter and replace it with a new one to form a new word.  Sometimes I would say the word and he would choose the initial letter.  Sometimes I would make the word myself and he would sound it out.  


It was so fun for both of us - he really felt a great sense of accomplishment!  It's on our list to do again very soon.