Decodable CVC Phonics Game
A Consonant Vowel Consonant (CVC)
Decodable CVC Phonics Game
Ideal for practicing blending letters to form words. The game has repeatedly proved itself to be a favorite of my reading groups. The students request it again and again. I like to play it as a warm-up or cool-down activity.
How to Play this Phonics Game:
1. Two, three, or four players sit so they are facing each other.
2. Select a dealer to shuffle the cards and give five cards to the members of the group, including themselves.
3. Place all the remaining cards in a pile face down in the center. Next, flip one card off the top of this pile and place it face up next to the stack.
4. The dealer reads the card by pronouncing the short vowel sound of the red letter and then the word
e.g. If the card is ‘fin’ the dealer says, ‘i like in fin’
If the card is ‘hot’ the dealer says, ‘o like in hot’
5. The children then look at their cards and take their turn moving to the left around the circle. If they have cards with the same medial sound as the one turned over by the dealer they can place one on top of the pile by saying ‘i like in thin’ or ‘i like in tin’.
6. If they do not have a match in their hand they pick up a card from the facedown pile. If the card they pick up is a match they can put it straight down, if not, they place it in their hand and the next player has a turn.
7. If the player does not have a match but has a CHANGE card in their hand they can change the sound being matched i.e. if say they had the cards ‘clap’, ‘hat’ & ‘had’ they would place down their CHANGE card and say “I’d like to change it to ‘a like in had’”. All the following players must match for ‘a’.
8. The person who is the first to have no cards left is the winner.
NB The power of this game as a learning tool comes from having the children say ‘o like in hot’ when playing. Please ensure they keep doing it throughout the learning sessions.
Words explored in this Game:
Short i – tin, bin, thin, fin, hint, win, pig, pin, kid, lid, mix, zip, dig
Short u – mum, sun, fun, lump, bun, but, tug, rug, cut, sun, tub, bus,
Short a – clap, hat, bad, had, cat,
Short o – hot, top, not, hop, fox,
Short e – hen, wet, red, jet, web
