Compound Words: Picture + Picture

Eight rows run down this 2nd grade compound-words worksheet, and every row is a little equation: a picture, a plus sign, a second picture, an equals sign, and a handwriting rule. A water bottle plus a melon. A bird plus a house. A wedge of cheese plus a slice of cake. A basket plus a ball. A star plus a fish. An arm plus a chair. A rain cloud plus a coat. A sun plus a flower. The child names the two pictures, says the two words together, and writes the new word on the rule: watermelon, birdhouse, cheesecake, basketball, starfish, armchair, raincoat, sunflower. Nothing is printed except the pictures, so the spelling of both halves comes from the child.

Two words make a new word with a new meaning — that is the whole lesson, and the pictures make it visible in a way a word list cannot. A starfish is not a star and not a fish; a birdhouse is a house for a bird, not a bird that is a house. Saying the two names and then running them together lets the child hear the compound as one word with one stress, and writing it without a space is the spelling habit 2nd grade is after. The teacher watches for a child who writes the two words with a gap between them and asks whether it is one thing or two; the picture answers the question.

It prints on one sheet with eight full rules. The split-the-compound page runs the same idea backward — the whole word is printed and the child marks where it breaks — and the compound-detective page mixes real compounds with words that only look like two words.