Paint Chip Reading Puzzles

This past week we had a blast reading with our paint chip reading puzzles. Okay, so to be fair, we made them with strips of stripped paper, but paint chips would work beautifully as well. As long as you have even, defined color lines that separate the sections, you can make these puzzles work.

We are always on the lookout for fun ways to practice our reading skills. My preschooler is picking it up fast, and it’s so fun to watch him find words he knows wherever we go. We wanted to work on CVC words so I made him word strip puzzles he could put together and read.

To create the paint chip reading puzzles, I started out by cutting strips of the paint chips (striped paper) in even widths. Then, I took three strips at a time and wrote consonants on the first and third strips, and vowels on the middle strip making a series of CVC words. Then I did the same thing with another set of three strips and so on.

Once I had made several sets, I handed them to my preschooler. His job was to find three sets that went together. He’d know he found a match if all of the rows made words. If he didn’t have the right strips, there were usually a few good words, but the rest were nonsense words.

If you want to simplify the game make all of the vowel strips a certain color so the kids know those go in the center.

If you want to make this more difficult, you could use beginning blends, vowels and word endings. You could also turn it into an addition puzzle by creating strips of addends and sums. Store the strips in a zip lock bag to be used over and over again.

This was a great activity to use at home, but it would also be fantastic to use for reading or math centers. It’s easy to make, and so much fun.

Thanks for checking out our paint chip reading puzzles. Happy reading!