Once children start learning to read, they become excited at being able to sound out the written word. There is suddenly a whole new world open to them! However, we need to ensure that progress is gradual, so that kids don’t get disheartened when they face longer and more complex words. A great way to increase a child’s vocabulary is by using sets of rhyming words, and our CVC Popsicle Stick Flowers are going to make this journey fun!

We’ve already described what short vowel or CVC words are in our first post about the CVC Word Train. When it comes to spelling patterns for CVC words, we can help children learn to spell sets of rhyming words using a simple rule – change the first part of the word (the letters that come before the vowel) and leave the last part of the word (the vowel and letters that follow it). For example, if the child can spell or read the word cat, they can figure out how to spell or read the words bat, fat, hat, mat, rat and sat by replacing the first letter with other letters.

Sounds easy, right? So let’s get down to making our CVC Popsicle Stick Flowers for some rhyming fun!

CVC Popsicle Stick Flowers to Learn Rhyming Words

Materials required:

• A-4 paper in different colors – green, yellow, orange
• Styrofoam Cups
• Popsicle Sticks
• Cardboard for Base
• Extra piece of Styrofoam/Thermocol
• Glue stick
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Gather all your materials.

2. Take an A 4 sheet and cut it into half.

3. Fold the top right corner down to the left side, aligning the edges to form a triangle. Repeat with the other half.

4. Cut off the extra part below the triangles. Unfold the triangles to get squares.

5. Fold the squares as shown to get smaller squares.

6. Fold the new squares diagonally and draw the shape of a petal on one side.

7. Cut along the line of the petals.

8. Unfold the paper to get – a perfect flower!

9. Cut circles from paper of a different color, measuring 2.5 inches in diameter. Paste them in the center of the flowers.

10. Stick Popsicle sticks to the backs of the flowers, as shown.

11. Write different consonants on some flowers, ‘ap’ on a flower, and complete words on other flowers.

12. Fill the Styrofoam cups with pieces of the extra Styrofoam piece. Stick the flowers into the cups.

13. Cover the cardboard base with green paper. Stick the cups on the base. Make ‘+’ and ‘=’ signs out of colored paper. You can also add your own add-ons like green grass or leaves. Fix everything on the base.

Your CVC Popsicle Stick flowers are ready! As with our previous post, we have a story for this one too!

A child sows a few seeds in a garden. The seeds grow into small plants with two colorful flowers. The child names them ‘a’ and ‘p’. The two young flowers become friends ( indicated by the plus sign) and join hands to became ‘ap’ . You can continue your story by adding other alphabets to create meaningful words of the ‘ap’ string family, like cap, gap, lap, tap, map etc.

Now you are ready to introduce CVC words to your own child with this colourful and innovative teaching aid! Let the kids join in making the flowers and stuffing them in the cups – it’ll make them feel more involved in the process. When you have such bright and pretty flowers with you, learning can’t be anything but fun!