Word cards for reading

CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words are essential for teaching children to decode, or read, unknown words. These printable CVC word flashcards feature colorful imagery and easy to identify middle vowel sounds for practice. Print the free flashcards to use for self practice or as a fun matching game!

Printable Flashcards

Once children begin to recognize a few letters and memorize their sounds, you should begin teaching and modeling reading CVC words.

Children should begin practicing this skill with assistance and then move to independent practice. This is a foundational reading skill children should master quickly using these short, easily read words!

And these free printable CVC word flashcards are excellent practice for students learning to read! They can be used a few ways- as flashcards for self-practice reading simple word, OR as a fun matching game!

The flashcards are separated by middle letter sound and feature bright, colorful, and easy to identify images.

To dig deeper, print only the pictures at first and have children spell the words on blank flashcards. Children can match them up or glue them next to each other on a separate piece of paper. Then, provide them with the word cards and have them ‘match’ them up to see how they did!

Age Group: These flashcards are most appropriate for young readers ages 4-6, usually in pre-K, Kindergarten, or first grade.

You may also like: CH Diagraph Worksheets.

Teaching CVC Words

CVC words should be used to introduce the important skill of blending individual phonemes to read words.

You can begin with nonsense words (use whatever consonant and vowel sounds children know already) and integrate real words too! Children should say each individual sound (segment), then stretch the sounds together (blend), and then quickly read the word.

👉 Example: /m/ /a/ /t/ –> mmmmmm aaaaaaaa t –> mat

Since vowels sounds are usually very difficult for students to master (especially the tricky /e/ and /i/), I like to make sure to teach one or two vowel sounds at a time until students have them mastered.

To reinforce the vowel sounds I’ve taught, I use only CVC words with those specific vowels. That is why I’ve designed and organized these free CVC worksheets by vowel sound.

So, if you’ve only taught letters ‘o’ and ‘a,’ you can easily use only words with those sounds. As you teach additional vowel sounds, you can then print and add more flashcards for targeted practice.

Once all vowel sounds are taught, children can use all the flashcards for sorting practice! Since they are all CVC words, the way to sort these would be by vowel sounds. After they sort and read the words, they can match the words to the corresponding pictures.

👉 It’s important to note that all CVC words are closed syllables, meaning that the vowels will say the short sound because they are ‘closed in’ by a consonant. Using nonsense words allows the teacher to see if students are mastering their letters and sounds because there is no room for guessing.

Example: If you present children with the nonsense word ‘tez,’ and they pronounce it ‘tease,’ then you know that they don’t recognize closed syllables since they aren’t applying the short sound of e. This would be something you would explicitly re-teach, model, and practice together.

Teaching sight words? Grab our HUGE collection of FREE sight word sentence cards! We now have over 250 of them, mostly for K-2 learners.

These sight word cards combine the PP through 3rd grade Dolch Word Lists with Fry’s first 100 and 2nd 100 high frequency words.

They’re perfect for individual work, small groups, center work, or to practice sight words at-home.

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250+ FREE Sight Word Sentence Cards

Sight words, often called high frequency words, are words we want our learners to recognize immediately. Despite what you’ve may have been told, the majority of them do follow the phonics “rules” we teach our young readers and spellers.

But they appear so frequently in reading that we don’t our readers stopping to sound them out each time they see one. You can read more about this in my article, Phonics or Sight Words?

Need more inspiration for teaching sight words? You may enjoy these blog posts:

• Sight Words: When they Just Don’t “Stick”
• The Teaching of Sight Words
• Printable Sight Word Lists
• Two Kinds of Sight Words

Each sight word card has the featured sight word at the top. At the bottom, there is a sentence with the sight word in bold. Each one also includes a simple picture that matches the sentence.

Because of their open-ended nature, there are TONS of things you can do with these. Here are just a few ideas, but you’re welcome to think of your own. If you do, I’d love to have you share your idea in the comments!

Copy onto cardstock, laminate, and hole-punch them and create simple sight word book flip books.

Learners can practice spelling the words with things like letter tiles, letter stamps, or magnetic letters. I even like to use old bottle caps!

Or learners can just read the sentences.

Hang your featured sight word(s) for the week on the wall or near your learner’s work area or at a center.

Click on any of these images to explore each set!

These are all exclusive subscriber freebies. If you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll receive these sight word cards and MANY more freebies!

Enjoy!
~Becky