Paint Chip Ideas #5–Beginning & Ending Sounds and Substitution

So, one last idea for your language arts lessons regarding paint chips. Begin with a Valspar triple paint chip from Lowes.

Turn the chip vertically with the square on the left side to create beginning sound chips. Now write word families or other word endings on the paint chip and simply cut apart on the white lines. If you really want to get fancy with all the paint chip ideas, use a Cricut to cut out pretty letters. Finally, use these to teach beginning sounds. My students simply use a dry erase marker and write in the square the sound they hear right on top of my kidney table. I use Clorox wipes to erase when we are all finished. You could also place these on top of a small white board or create tag board paper strips to use behind the square.

    

I also use this idea to create ending sound chips. Just flip the Valspar paint chip vertically so the punched out squares are on the right side this time as shown below.

Using these ideas, I can also teach my students how to substitute letter sounds at the beginning or ending of a word. For example, the picture above “hi__” can be written as “him.” Once the student hears the /m/ sound, I can ask him to substitute the /m/ sound and make a new word using the /s/ sound, “his.” Substituting beginning and ending sounds becomes easier for the child using this method and they love choosing the colorful paint chips each time.

Terena

If you have comments or other great ideas regarding paint chips, I’d love to hear from you!