By skyforbes 
Inside: Read on for fun activities and printables for preschoolers to learn to read CVC words. Find tips to teach preschoolers the early reading skills to decode CVC words and a list of CVC words for preschoolers inside!
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At What Age Do Children Learn to Read?
Research tells us that once most children reach the age of around six or seven, they are usually able to link sounds to letters, in order to both decode and make words, and are ‘beginning to make sense of what they read’ as Early Readers.
To do this, children need to have a strong grasp of their alphabet and beginning sound phonics.
Have a preschooler? Check out these posts in our Learn to Read series first:
When children have mastered their letters and letter sounds, what comes next? They are ready to move on to learning the early reading skills of segmenting and blending, and reading CVC words.
Teaching the Early Reading Skills: Segmenting and Blending
To understand segmenting and blending as a part of early reading, it is helpful to understand why we use the term ‘decoding’. Think of it this way: written text is a jumble of symbols and spaces to a child before they begin obtaining the skills to make sense of it.
Once a child is familiar with the beginning sounds of the alphabet (the sound each letter makes when it comes at the beginning of a word), they may be ready to move on to learning two new decoding skills:
- Segmenting – looking at a word and identifying the individual sounds that make it
For example: the word ‘cat’ has three sounds that make up its beginning, middle and end: C-A-T
This skill requires your child to do something called Phoneme Isolation where they notice that the word contains 3 sounds, represented by 3 letters.
- Blending – once segmented, to read a word, we must blend each sound back together by dragging one sound into the next
For example: we have segmented the word ‘cat’ into three sounds, now we can sound them out: ccc-aaa-ttt.
There are actually two new reading skills here so it is important not to rush your child while they are beginning to learn them. Work with your child to help them understand the concept of letters going together before moving on to taking a word, segmenting it and then blending it back together.
What are CVC Words?
Because blending involves noticing and separating the individual sounds in a word (segmenting or phoneme isolation), when a child first learns blending, it is common to start with CVC word activities.
CVC words are simple words that follow the sequence: consonant, vowel, consonant.
- Examples of vowels include: a, e, i, o, u.
- Examples of consonants include: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z.
List of CVC Words for Preschoolers
- CVC words with the short a vowel: cat, map, sad, pan, bag, jam
- CVC words with the short e vowel: hen, net, web, bed, pen, vet
- CVC words with the short i vowel: pin, big, sit, zip, mix, lid
- CVC words with the short o vowel: hot, fox, log, dot, top, sob
- CVC words with the short u vowel: sun, cut, bus, hug, mud, cup
These printables are part of the CVC Words Printable Pack and they are exclusive for Happy Tot Shelf mailing list subscribers. Sign up for HTS mailing list and to get this CVC Words Printable Pack and over 60 free printables inside the printable library.
Why Start with Learning CVC Words First?
CVC words are made up of obvious beginning, middle and ending sounds and are therefore easy to segment and blend. They are one of the easiest words for preschoolers to learn to read first.
It may help for you to explain to your preschooler that they can look for the beginning, middle and end of a word to help them blend or read it.
Related: Beginning Sounds, Middle Sounds and End Sounds – Happy Kids at Home on YouTube
How to Introduce CVC Words
- Download and print the CVC Word List with Pictures printables. Cut out the CVC word cards.
- Choose a CVC word card.
- Begin by practising blending the consonant and vowel (CV) together first.
- Model each sound clearly for your child, placing your finger on each dot and pointing to each written letter
- Model how your voice changes as we move from one sound to the other, while moving your finger in a swiping motion from one letter to the next
- Bring your child’s attention to your mouth to make the change in sounds obvious
- Then add in the last consonant and repeat the above steps to blend the three letter sounds together.
Keep practising reading CVC words with the following CVC Words Activities!
10+ CVC Words Activities for practising segmenting, blending and reading CVC Words
1) CVC Word Cards
- Print the CVC Words with Pictures printables. Find the download link below.
- Cut out the cards and sort the cards into 5 groups according to the middle vowels in each word. There should be 6 cards for each vowel.
- Use one group of cards at one time.
- Model the blending process:
- Place your finger on the first dot and say out the beginning letter sound.
- Slide your finger to the second dot and say out the short vowel sound.
- Slide your finger to the third dot and say out the ending letter sound.
- Lastly, swiftly slide across all three dots, simultaneously sounding out the letter sounds. This action blends the three letter sounds, allowing you to pronounce the complete CVC word.
- Now invite your child to pick a card and practise blending the CVC words using the steps above.
2) Feed the Animals CVC Blending
- Print the activity and cut out the animal foods. Find the download link for this printable below.
- Use a hole punch to punch a small hole in each food
- Using a finger or pencil, invite your child to swipe the animal food across from it’s beginning consonant letter to the vowel and to the consonant as they practise CVC blending.
These printables are part of the CVC Words Printable Pack and they are exclusive for Happy Tot Shelf mailing list subscribers. Sign up for HTS mailing list and to get this CVC Words Printable Pack and over 60 free printables inside the printable library.
3) CVC Words Slider
- Write the five vowels (each approximately 3 cm tall) on a long piece of cardboard.
- Prepare the slider board by cutting a 5 cm wide strip of construction paper.
- Cover the slider board with packing tape over the slider board to create a erasable surface for writing.
- Cut out a square in the centre of the slider board, measuring 4 cm by 4 cm.
- Position the slider board over the cardboard and secure the two ends of the slider boards together. The slider board should be ‘wrapping’ the cardboard.
- Use a dry erase marker to write the beginning and ending consonants on the slider board.
- Move the slider board down, aligning with each vowel to form a CVC word.
- Practise blending the consonant, vowel, consonant sounds and reading aloud the CVC word.
4) Listen and Arrange the letters
- Display 3 letters in front of your child and invite them to listen as you say each sound
- First try – smack, grab or point to each letter as you say it’s sound
- Second try – listen and rearrange the beginning, middle and end sounds into the right order
- Final try – demonstrate blending the beginning, middle and end sounds together to make the word
- Optional: write the word for a visual your child can grab and match letters to if they are struggling to hear each sound
5) Parking Cars CVC Words
- Draw a simple 3 space carpark on a piece of paper
- Using toy cars, attach a dot sticker to each with one common letter on each (begin with a maximum of 5-6)
- Invite your child to listen as you verbalise the sounds in a word, i.e. T-I-N and select which letters they hear
- They can then ‘park’ each car in the carpark in order of beginning, middle and end sound to make the word which they have heard
6) I SPY Listening and Blending
- Similar to above, without using any visual guides, invite your child to listen while you play I SPY
- While clearly saying each sound of the word say, “I spy with my little eye a… m-a-t.” See whether your child can listen, blend the sounds together and tell you the item.
7) Change the CVC Word
- Using a whiteboard or drawing tablet, write out a CVC word
- Work together to segment and blend the word
- See whether your child can change one letter to make a different word
- This game can go on as long as you can come up with new words
- eg. cat, cap, tap, tip, dip, pip, pit, pat, pan
8) Spin the Roll Segmenting and Blending Toy
- Using paper and a cardboard tube or long drink bottle, cut 3 paper strips which fit beside each other over the tube
- Write letters on each strip (see picture for example) and loosely tape each paper roll onto the tube
- Play with the toy by taking turns to spin the beginning, middle and end sounds to make and practise blending CVC words
9) Paper Plate Sunflower CVC Word Activity
- Make this cute sunflower CVC word activity to practise blending simple CVC words
10) Paper Cup Blending Board
- Use paper cups to set up this simple CVC word segmenting and blending game.
11) 11) Airplane Reading Board
- Make reading CVC words a fun adventure in the clouds!
Questions about teaching blending and reading CVC Words
Focus first on helping the child to understand the concept of blending through highlighting two sounds separately, followed by the change in sound and mouth movement as we move verbally from one letter to the next. This is simplest with consonant – vowel (CV) blends and then moving on to CVC words.
Blending is an organic next step to learning letters and their beginning sounds. You may find your child begins asking about words or letters and you can take the opportunity to model blending as you respond. You may also find that your child begins pretending to write or read words and you can take this opportunity to model blending before introducing focused activities.
It is common for beginning reading activities to use CVC words (simple words that follow the sequence: consonant, vowel, consonant). This is because there is less room to get confused by sounds that don’t follow normal phonics rules or blending multiple consonants.
Once they have gained some practice, children usually move on to learning multiple consonant blends, looking at varying long and short vowel sounds in words and words that don’t follow normal phonics rules.
Try these CVC Words activities to get started!
Being involved in your child’s first developing reading skills through connection at home can not only encourage them long term as they face the harder stages of learning to read, but receiving reading instruction at home as well as at school is known to lead to stronger literacy outcomes.
So, why wait? Dive into these enriching CVC words activities to kickstart your child’s reading adventure today!
What’s Next?
As your child starts to be able to read, they will encounter high frequency words that require advanced phonics rules to decode. So memorising easy sight words will help them read faster and more fluently.
I have 10 Easy Sight Words Activities for Kindergarten Beginning Readers and a printable sight words list and cards to get you started!
Happy learning!