Compound Words for First Grade

As those little ones continue to build up their vocabulary past kindergarten, you'll want to prepare a number of useful resources to facilitate their learning. Do you know many compound words for first grade? If you need some to teach a lesson or to explain them to your students, then this article will definitely help. There are some games, worksheets, and online resources for you to use.

Compound Words for First Grade Compound Words for First Grade

Reviewing Compound Words

Putting it simply, a compound word is made by putting two words together to form a single word. The resulting compound word may have a meaning that cannot be determined directly by examining the two constituent words.

Examples are:

  • Cupcake (cup + cake): A small cake for a single person, usually with icing on top
  • Something (some + thing): A thing that may not be entirely known
  • Nowhere (no + where): Not in any place
  • Anybody (any + body): Any person at all

There are many compound words for first grade that students of that age can easily understand and enjoy working with. Following are several fun activities and worksheets for the classroom that are appropriate for this level of learning.

Matching Games

Compound words work really well in matching games. Just print out the words on heavy paper, cut them out, and make a matching activity. Children love finding matching pairs among the pile, and it also allows for some creativity in forming new words altogether.

  • There are 20 compound words at First School Years that are appropriate for first grade students.
  • Apples4TheTeacher has word search games with compound words that you can print out for classroom use.

Worksheets for Compound Words

In addition to the matching games above, you may be interested in some more formal materials for teaching compound words to the children. Provided here is a printable PDF worksheet that has practice questions for compound words for first grade students. Simply click on it to download to your computer, and then print it as many copies as you need.

compound word practice worksheet

View & Download PDF

The answers for the questions on the worksheet above are as follows.

Section A

  1. ponytail
  2. backyard
  3. grasshopper
  4. earthquake
  5. pancake
  6. dragonfly
  7. jellyfish
  8. lipstick
  9. toothbrush
  10. playground

Section B

  1. hand out writing paper shake
  2. door knob place way mat
  3. air play plane line port
  4. down hill there stairs town
  5. fire fly proof works brush
  6. head over ache first light
  7. ear ring phone play ache
  8. house work down wife hold
  9. cross over word tail road
  10. bed bug time spread wash
  11. under arm shirt boat ground
  12. sea food sky shell shore
  13. time piece table over keeper
  14. out arm side come doors
  15. life fly boat time guard

Section C

  1. sunrise
  2. popcorn
  3. afternoon
  4. haircut
  5. cowboy
  6. fireplace
  7. newspaper
  8. football
  9. scarecrow
  10. bulldog

A Life of Learning

One of the most important lessons you can teach first-graders is that learning is fun! When helping them with understanding compound words, be sure that they're having a good time. This will pave the way for a lifelong love of learning, so when they have to tackle intransitive verbs and the past perfect tense, they'll approach them with enthusiasm rather than disdain.


Post a comment