Water Balloon Phonics

This week, we’re diving into Alphabet and Phonics with a playful twist that’s perfect for summer! If you're looking for hands-on summer activities for kids, this one’s a hit. Get ready for Water Balloon Phonics—a creative way to help little learners practice letter sounds while getting outside and staying cool!

You will need:

Water balloons
Permanent marker
Index cards
Tape

Kids love water balloons and since it's summer can there be a more fun way to learn? For this phonics activity, I filled 15 water balloons and wrote some word endings on them - at, an, ar, ug, in. I made 3 balloons for each ending.

Then I wrote the following letters on index cards: F, H, C, J, P, B, and M. I taped those cards to the wall.

I gave the kids the box of water balloons with the word endings. They would pick a balloon and bring it up to a letter to see if it made a word. If it did, they had to read the word and they got try and throw the balloon on the letter to pop it.

In addition to being a fun phonics game, my kids had the opportunity to enjoy some gross motor play.

Sometimes they really surprised me with their good aim!

Whenever they got a new balloon, they would go down the line of letters to see if they had a word. "Har is not a word, but car is!"

As we played, we kept a list of the words that we made. At the end we read and reviewed them.

If you are looking for a way to practice phonics that doesn't involve worksheets and you want to beat the heat as well, then you need to try water balloon phonics.