Word List
Compound Words
A compound word is two whole words joined into one, like sun plus flower making sunflower. They are the easiest long words for a child to read, because both halves are words they already know. The lists below start with the shortest and build up, each with its own worksheets, and the last one is a set you can do with pictures alone.
- sunset
- hotdog
- cupcake
- bathtub
- pancake
- popcorn
- laptop
- bedbug
- butterfly
- playground
- afternoon
- basketball
- strawberry
- watermelon
- grandma
- railroad
Easy compound words to start with
Read the first half, read the second half, then say them together. If your child stalls, cover one half with your finger so only one short word is showing: that one move turns a seven-letter word they will not attempt into two words they already know.
All eight halves are short-vowel words, so a child who reads CVC words can read every part of every word here. Compound words for kids has the three-minute routine and the games.
- sunset
- hotdog
- cupcake
- bathtub
- pancake
- popcorn
- laptop
- bedbug
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Printables for Easy Compound Words
Longer compound words
These are longer, not harder. The halves are still words your child can read, so the method does not change: read one half, read the other, put them together.
Two of them are worth a conversation rather than a correction. A butterfly is neither butter nor a fly, and a strawberry has no straw in it, so the meaning does not come from the halves even though the reading does. A child who notices that is reading well, not wrongly.
Once these are easy, the next step is two-syllable words whose parts are not words at all, like napkin and rabbit. One-syllable words is the rung below, and compound words for kids explains why this one sits between them.
- butterfly
- playground
- afternoon
- basketball
- strawberry
- watermelon
- grandma
- railroad
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Printables for Longer Compound Words
Compound words you can draw
Every word here is two pictures. Your child names the first picture, names the second, and writes the two words straight through — which is a long word spelled by a child who could not have read it. The lines show how many letters to expect and nothing else.
Say both halves out loud before writing anything. Hearing sun and
flower next to each other is what produces sunflower; looking at the two
drawings and trying to picture the finished word is a harder task and a
different one.
A few of them make a word whose meaning is not its two halves, and those are the interesting rows rather than the broken ones. Moonlight is not a lightbulb, and a caveman is not a man made of cave. The spelling works exactly the same way either time, which is the thing worth noticing.
Compound words for kids has the three-minute routine, and one-syllable words is where to go if a half is still hard on its own.
- sunflower
- cupcake
- pancake
- doghouse
- catfish
- starfish
- eggshell
- teapot
- handbag
- sunglasses
- gumball
- basketball
- wheelchair
- moonlight
- lighthouse
- caveman
- dogsled
- spiderweb
- teaspoon
- flowerpot
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Printables for Words You Can Draw
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Mixed review: printables for the whole list
Every sheet below is built from the Compound Words above. No account, no email, no watermark. Start at the top and print one at a time. The sheets are in teaching order, and ten minutes on a single sheet is more valuable than working through a stack on autopilot.
Frequently asked questions
What types of compound words are most frequently used in English?
Closed compounds, written as one word, are the ones children read first: sunset, cupcake, football, bedroom. The other kinds are open compounds, written with a space (ice cream), and hyphenated ones (mother-in-law). Only the closed kind is a single word on the page, which is why all sixteen words here are closed.
Which compound words are easier for young readers to grasp?
The ones whose halves are both short words the child already reads, and whose meaning is the two halves added together. Sunset, hotdog and cupcake all pass both tests. Butterfly does not pass the second one, since a butterfly is neither butter nor a fly, and words like that are easier to read than to explain.
What are the most commonly misspelled compound words?
The ones that are not actually one word. A lot and all right are two words, and ice cream and high school stay separate. Everyday and every day are both correct and mean different things. Reading a compound word is easier than spelling it, because reading only asks whether the two halves are there.
How can parents help kids learn compound words at home?
Cover one half with your finger, have your child read the half they can see, then uncover the other and let them put the two together. Three minutes is a session. How to teach compound words at home, with the games that work, is on the compound words guide.