How to Play:

1. Players sit facing.
2. The dealer shuffles the cards and gives five cards to each group member.
3. The remaining cards are placed face down in a pile in the center of the playing surface.
4. The dealer flips the top card off the pile and places it faces up next to the stack.
5. The dealer reads this card aloud being sure to sound the short vowel first then state the whole word to the group

6. Children examine the cards in their hands to see if they have the vowel sound mentioned by the dealer.
7. The player to the left of the dealer has the next turn. If they have a card with the same medial sound as the one turned
   over by the dealer they can place one on top of the pile and say ‘i like in thin’ or ‘i like in tin’.
8. If they do not have a match they must pick up a card from the face-down 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.
9. If the player does not have a match but has a CHANGE card they can change the sound being matched e.g.  If they had
   the cards ‘clap’, ‘hat’ and ‘had’ they could place down their CHANGE card and say “I’d like to change it to ‘alike in had’ ”.
   All the following players must match for ‘a ’.
10. Play continues in this manner until one player has no cards left. This player is declared the winner.

NB The power of this game as a learning tool comes from having the children focus on the short vowel by saying, ‘o like in hot’ aloud when playing. Ensure they keep doing it throughout the learning sessions.

Included In This Download:

Words Cards Included: