Vowel Digraph Game
ea, ee, ai & ay

 Vowel Digraph Game

The Essence of this Phonics Game: 

‘Change’ is a fun 2 to 4-player game that involves high repetition of the vowel digraphs ea, ee, ai, and ay.

Preparation:

Print the cards, laminate them if possible, and cut them out.

How to Play:  

– Two, three, or four players sit so they are facing each other.

Select a dealer to shuffle the cards and give five cards to each group member, including themselves.

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.

The dealer reads the card by pronouncing the sound of the letters marked in orange and then the word e.g. If the card is ‘feed’ the dealer says, ‘ee ’ like in feed’. If the card is ‘dream’ the dealer says, ‘ea like in dream’
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 sound as the one turned over by the dealer they can place one on top of the pile by saying ‘ ea like in ea ch’.
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.
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  ‘dr ain’, ‘fr ail’ and ‘br ai n’ they would place down their CHANGE card and say “I’d like to change it to ‘ ai ’ like in brain’”. All the following players must match for ‘ ai’.
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 ‘ai ’ like in ‘snail’ when playing. Please ensure they keep doing it throughout the learning sessions.

Words Included in this Game:

ai – rain, gain, main, train, sprain, aid, raid, afraid, sail, paint, pain, tail, mail, paid,
ay – ray, tray, pray, spray, say, crayon, day, today, yesterday, bay, play, always, way, away
ee – see, been, free, seed, speed, feel, cheer, agree, street, feet, speech, sweet, knee, three, tree,
ea – eat, meat, beat, beak, weak, team, steam, stream, reason, squeal, teach, reach, dream, cream,
12 change cards

What People Have Said About this Vowel Game: 

I played this at home with my kids. They were struggling with vowel digraphs. They thought it was fun, and it was good practice for them!

My students absolutely love this game! Great way to help them develop automaticity with these vowel pairs. I use it as a “reward” for them during free time. Thanks!