5 CVC Words Activities Your Students Will Love

Chances are if you are a kindergarten or first grade teacher you will spend a lot of time working with CVC words. To keep things interesting for your students as they are practicing this skill, you’ll want to vary your instruction. Below, I’ve given you five suggestions for CVC words activities that your students can use to work on this concept. (And you may just find your students’ favorite activity on this list!)

Clip Cards

A staple center in my classroom is clip cards. They are especially great for kindergarten and first grade students because not only are your students working on an academic skill, but they are also building up their fine motor skills!

A simple CVC words clip card center can easily be differentiated depending on your students’ skill levels.

Your students could work on beginning sounds, vowel sounds, ending sounds, onset and rime, word identification, or even phoneme substitution! 

Hands-On Word Building

If you are looking for CVC words activities to engage your young students, you should definitely try incorporating hands-on learning into your daily lessons. This can look like many different things in the classroom and you’ll find that some students are more drawn to certain activities than others.

A few ideas to use with CVC words would include puzzles, play dough mats, and word building with magnetic letters or other tools.

Write the Room Activities

An activity that is popular in classrooms around the world is write the room. This allows students to get out of their seats and MOVE, but with purpose! 

If you want to use this activity with a particular skill like CVC words, you’ll likely need to put out specific picture cards (with or without words) to have students find around the classroom.

Then they can simply record the words as they find them or they could sort the words (by beginning sound, word family, etc.).

CVC Words Worksheets

One of the easiest CVC words activities for YOU is worksheets. These take little prep time as you simply need to print and run copies.

But there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind when selecting worksheets for your students:

• Are the pages engaging? Do they include pictures or a fun theme to keep students interested?
• Are the pages interactive? Is there a cut and paste element? Are they coloring?

• Are the pages academic? Are students actually practicing the target skill or is the page mostly fluff?

You’ll find lots of worksheets on the internet for free, but that doesn’t mean they are what you are looking for. Make sure you look over the pages before giving them to your students.

Worksheets can look like many things, so be sure to consider multiple options. There are traditional worksheets, cut and paste worksheets, word searches, stamping worksheets, and more! Find what works best for your students.

CVC Games

One of the best ways – if not the best way – to practice skills in the classroom is through games. Often times students don’t even realize that they are learning as they play the game.

And of course, with games, you are targeting some social-emotional skills as well.

Try looking for games that target the specific skill you are covering (like beginning sounds) to make the most of the game.

These are great for small groups, literacy centers, and tutoring.

Add These CVC Words Activities to Your Lesson Plans Today

Now that you’ve got some ideas, pick out a few new CVC words activities to try with your students as they work with CVC words. My favorite activity from this list is good old-fashioned worksheets… but I’m partial to coloring!