Teachers begin teaching CVC words in kindergarten, once children have learned their letters and sounds.
CVC stands for consonant vowel consonant. These words are the simplest words to sound out aka decode.
Here are four CVC word games for kindergarten from least to most difficult. All of them use a muffin pan and CVC words with pictures.
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Check out my shop to get my CVC words with pictures.pdf.
For this activity in particular, I recommend using words from the AT Word Family for the most beginning readers. The AT Word Family is one of the very first word families children are taught to read.
Not only do kids practice their beginning sound knowledge with this game, they also are building awareness of the other sounds in the word.
The beauty of the muffin pan is that it breaks down each word into 3 components: the CVC -consonant, vowel, consonant parts. Similarly to a story, each word has its beginning, middle, and end.
To play, place each CVC word's picture by the corresponding line on the muffin pan. Point out how the middle and ending sounds are there, but the beginning sound is missing.
First have your child choose a beginning sound matching the picture.. Then model how to sound out the word: /b/ /a/ /g/. Finally, blend the sounds together to make the whole CVC word.
It's okay if your child cannot yet blend the sounds together.
Having you model pointing to each letter from left to right while saying the sound will greatly enhance their understanding of the steps it takes to read a word.
In this version, everything is the same except the ending sounds missing from the CVC words.
It might seem we have gone a bit out of order by skipping the middle sounds. However, middle sounds are the most difficult to isolate since vowels are similar in sound.
Have your kindergartner isolate the ending sound of the word, then find the matching letter and complete the word. Don't stop just there! Point to each letter from left to right and sound out the word before blending the sounds together to make the complete CVC word.
Teaching CVC words in kindergarten is a snap when you break it down letter by letter.
In the example, kids are given the four letters that are the correct ending sounds. But, if you're child is ready for a challenge, you can include more letters (up to 10) for them to choose from!
If you're looking for more ending sounds activities that kids will love to get their hands on, try these.
Isolating middle sounds to complete the CVC words is a trickier skill to practice. This is because vowels have multiple sounds and often sound similar for young learners.
Accordingly, we stick to teaching CVC words with short vowel sounds: bat, rat, dog, fog first. Kids wait until first grade to practice words like car and for (where the vowels don't make their short vowel sound.)
In kindergarten we teach kids two ways to isolate and listen for the middle sounds in CVC words:
One of my favorite strategies for stretching out the word is to speak "Whale" like Dory in Finding Nemo. Certainly, if your child has seen that movie, they'll know just what to do. Really stretch out the CVC word and listen for the middle sound.
Like with ending sounds, you can offer just the 4 missing middles or give them a chance to pick out the right ones out of all the letters!
To learn more about isolating beginning, middle, and ending sounds, check out these sound isolation activities.
In my house, I'm known for sitting around with my Cup Of Noodles. So my kids' dubbed this version of the game: Cup of Wordles.
This activity is the culmination of teaching CVC words in kindergarten! The kids have to build the entire word themselves. It's still very simple since there are only 4 words to build at a time, and the kids have the letters to choose from.
In 4 cups, I put the letters needed to make each of the words. Then I place each cup in the beginning sound spot of the muffin pan.
Kids choose a cup and unscramble the letters in it to make the word on the matching CVC word picture card. Then, they check their work by sounding out the letters to read the CVC word.
The Cup of Wordles title is just another engaging way to engage the kids in play. They could be bakers, chefs, or home cooks in the kitchen using their letter ingredients to make delicious words.
Now that you have your CVC words with pictures, why not practice some more reading? Your kindergartener will thank you for playing these simple and fun CVC word games.
I asked my teacher bestie how to dye rice for a Valentine's Day Activity I planned to make for my kids. She said it was easy, but I really doubted that. It looked like a headache to me.
Turns out she was right!
I did a little instagram story on "how to dye rice for sensory bins" and a bunch of other insta-moms told me how to simplify what I was doing to make it in just two steps.
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You'll need the following items:
Originally, I was told to use 1 tsp white distilled vinegar for each cup of rice I dyed, but the super awesome mamas watching my story told me that I don't even need that. Awesome!
If you're planning on dying rice for sensory bins and need multiple colors, just portion the rice into multiple bags.
My number one tip for any sensory bin- put it in a second bin. Bins in bins is the way to go.
For our first experience in how to dye rice for sensory play, I used a tray as the catch all for any rice that was going to spill out.
My second major tip is to always go over expectations about the sensory fillers for the bin. Make sure the kids respond to your questions to check for understanding!
My kids almost robotically tell me each time, "We keep it in the bin!" Spills happen but if you have a bin inside a bin, the clean up is really simple.
Make a love potion for some fine motor skills practice as kids scoop and transfer rice.
How many scoops would it take to fill the potion? A great way to incorporate counting is to count scoops of rice!
Yes, you can use the same exact set up to play again the next day. Kids love repetition, but even one new "invitation to play" can change the whole game.
Instead of being completely child led for this activity, I gave the girls a mission. "Inside the dyed rice are a bunch of tiny erasers, (thanks Target Dollar Spot!). Can you search for and rescue these little hearts, puppies, and kittens with your kid tongs?" I explained.
Do you have these?
I love kids tongs for adding a new element to play. Not only are the tongs fun for the kids to use, the practice of squeezing the tongs and releasing them builds up the hands muscles kids need for fine motor skills such as buttoning, tying shoes, and writing. To learn more about how to make fine motor play fun for your little one, check out this list of favorite fine motor activities.
Now that I know how to dye rice, I think I might need to go buy some more rice. And did you know we can store dyed rice in an air tight container for up to 5 years?
I've got my eye on rainbow rice for my next dyed rice sensory bin!
How about you?
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I can still remember the Easter activities we did in preschool from when I was 3 and 4. My family didn't celebrate Easter and I was completely enthralled by the magical activity of hunting for eggs all around the preschool campus.
As a teacher, I got my hands on those magical Easter Eggs, because they're full of so much hands-on learning potential for teaching lots of kindergarten and preschool skills like numbers, letters, and fine motor skills.
Our family celebrates Easter now and as a mother, I wanted to harness the magic of the Easter Egg for some incredible Easter activities for my preschoolers. So Glowing Alphabet Easter Eggs were born... um, I mean laid?
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On a piece of paper write the alphabet in all capital letters. Then on a separate sheet of paper, write the
Alphabet Easter Activity for Preschool
alphabet again. If you're doing this Easter activity with toddlers, I suggest only choosing maybe 5 letters to hide over and over again in the Easter eggs and keep them all capital. I would start with the letters of their name!
Since we were playing this Easter game with a preschooler and a toddler, I chose to put lowercase letters in the eggs, but you can use all capital letters, or like I suggested, limit the number of letters to be less overwhelming to your child.
Cut out small strips from the paper with the second alphabet written on it.
Then, comes the really satisfying part. Crack 26 mini glow sticks for what will soon be the coolest Easter activity your preschooler has ever seen.
In each egg, place one one letter and one glow stick.
Once you've got all the eggs ready and glowing, you're ready to hide them for your preschooler to find.
Once you've hidden the eggs in a dark room, make sure to clear the space of any tripping hazards. Always practice caution and even if it makes the glow a little less magical, it's best to keep a small source of light on so no one gets hurt!
Set expectations before you start. Where do you want the children to collect the eggs? Are they allowed to run? Should they wait before cracking them? It's all up to you, but I found that being specific with my expectations during the game allows everything to go much more smoothly.
Ready, set, Easter Eggs are a go!
I'm always looking to embed learning in play. Think about it. If your children's first memories of learning letters are through playful, enchanting memories like this spectacular activity, they're going to have a positive association with letters and with learning as a whole.
I'm never pushing my kids into learning letters at an early age. In fact, they're the ones asking me to create learning activities for them, because while we are learning, we are playing together, connecting, creating, and making memories. This is our special Mama and Me time.
Letters are the forefront of this preschool easter activity but there is a lot of other learning that happens here too. Kids are:
Alphabet Fun with Easter Eggs
Pro tip: Including an imaginative play element will always increase engagement in the learning activity with preschoolers!
When all the eggs are found and my preschoolers were ready to match the letters, we used our imagination to "hatch" the baby letters from the eggs. The baby lowercase alphabet were eager to find their parent, the matching capital letter.
My kids were so enchanted by the soft glowing eggs, we must have played this 6 times more after the initial alphabet puzzle was completed.
Just because Easter Sunday only comes about once a year, doesn't mean the egg hunt only gets to happen once a year. Whether you're setting up this Easter activity for your preschoolers, toddlers, or kindergarteners it is sure to delight them.
Bonus points if you have a glow stick dance party afterwards!
Environmental print is all around us and a part of our everyday life.
When you read the traffic signs as you drive, that's environmental print. As you open the fridge and read the label on the milk, that too is environmental print. Even the ever recognizable Disney Logo is environmental print.
If you haven't put your finger on it just yet, environmental print means the words all around us. As children, environmental print surrounds us and as children become aware of letters and sounds, they look around them and see that written words have always been present in their world.
Often environmental print is the first kind of print that children "read." Why? Well they'll be reading the words that represent things that they can recognize before they really know all their letters and sound.
Does this sound familiar? Your child passes the "Lucky Charms" in aisle six and yells out, "Mom, can we have some of that Lucky Charms?" Well, my friend, they've just read their environment, and whether or not you're prepared to buy the Lucky Charms (there's some on my counter right now), you should be proud of their recognization of the print in their environment.
Is it really reading if my child has just memorized a word or phrase by how it looks? Yes, it is! When kids are reading environmental print they're relying on context: location, font, possibly a picture, and other clues. This is a kind of reading that differs from phonics, where we sound out a word, but it is SO valuable! Children will require memorization to read many words that don't make phonetic sense (such as sight words).
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The more children see and become familiar with letters and sounds, the more comfortable they are trying to read. A print rich environment is a space that has LOTS and LOTS of environmental print.
If you are teaching pre-k or kindergarten, you definitely want to have an environmental print anywhere you can in your classroom. The more exposure kids have to letters and words, the more likely they are to really sink in! Also, seeing lots of words around them will reinforce the principle that words go from left to write and top to bottom, something that needs to be taught and is called "concepts of print." So yes, the more environmental print you have in your home or classroom, the more comfortable children will be interacting with print!
Here are some environmental print examples for your preschool or kindergarten classroom or even your home:
Class-made signs and posters like this classroom helpers sign. I would even add pictures next to the names of the jobs to help promote association of the picture with the word.
Environmental print alphabet that goes around the room
Handwriting alphabet chart - love that these come laminated!
Daily schedule
All these are typical examples of classroom environmental print that kids use to make sense of the world around them, building their print awareness: understanding of letters, difference between letters and words, and many other early literacy concepts. So make sure you create a print rich environment in kindergarten and preschool!
These activities are not only fun, they'll also give your students a confidence boost that they ARE a reader.
Though they may not be reading phonetically yet, a big part of reading is using context and picture clues to figure out the words, so yes, recognizing the Spiderman and Batman logos counts as reading. You bet my kid knows the box of Kraft says, "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese."
As kids have small successes reading print in the following fun activities, they're going to more smoothly transition into reading overall. Why? Because practicing early reading skills like reading environmental print will become a preferred activity and of course, with practice comes progress!
These activities are simple and low prep. Use the objects you have lying around the house or classroom. For teachers, you can ask kids to bring in boxes or wrappers from foods they like and magazines for the ones that involve cutting out letters or words.
Cut out the names of kids' favorite foods labels from the kitchen and glue them to a paper. Have them practice reading the names back to you.
I was actually shocked to see my daughter read every label in this activity. The fonts and context give major clues but later when we cut out the packaging, she was still able to read all these words!
Have your kids look for every letter of the alphabet in their environment. For this activity, you'll want to have some magazines, catalogues, or boxes with labels on them.
As kids find the letters have them, cut out each one and glue it onto your Alphabet Chart till you have found A-Z in the environment. Looking for more ways to expose your child to the alphabet? These 13 epic games will have them loving learning their letters.
Using a clipboard and paper or a white board, have your child or students walk around the classroom or home and write the print they see in the room. Kids always love a literacy activity that allows them to get moving!
Did you ever do this? On a long car ride, I would always look for all the numbers in order from 1-100. Numbers are considered print too and they're all over our environment, especially when we are driving. There are speed limits, road signs, and license plates.
For this game, I would print out a hundreds chart and have your child cross off the numbers they see. They can do it in order or out of order.
Want to play with the alphabet? Write down the letters from A-Z, and then have them spy each letter on their drive.
This clever sight word activity from mydayinprek.wordpress.com/ mixes fabulously with reading one's environment. Kids use sentence starters with familiar sight words such as "I see" and "I like the" to move around their space and create sentences with environmental print. For example, "I like the" paired with "goldfish." Really, who doesn't like those addicting little goldfish crackers.
This cute printable from https://www.pre-kpages.com makes a great early literacy center. Just print, laminate, and cut then play. Kids will recognize the labels and logos of child friendly items and places.
So which environmental print activity are you going to try first? If you liked these activities don't forget to share them!
