Word Card Matching Phonics Game

We are really enjoying our time with the Jolly Phonics activity books in our homeschool preschool, and while it’s completely comprehensive, I wanted a supplement to help Aamina bridge the gap between sounding out words and blending them.

It’s a stage that all kids go through: they are able to sound out the letters of words, but then they completely guess at what is the resulting word. C-A-T reads “pirate?” Oops. I believe that in order for our kids to want to face challenges, we have to present them with challenges in which they can be successful, especially when they are very young. A matching game is a great way to offer a this type of challenge for a budding reader.

These cards are originally intended to match up with Book 1 of the Jolly Phonics Activity book series, so it assumes your child knows the sounds to letters S, A, T, I, P, and N. I highly recommend this phonics program, but the cards are useful to children who know these sounds regardless of where they learned them from.

As you can see in my Jolly Phonics overview YouTube video, the end of the book has some cards for this exact same concept. Simply, you cut out all the cards, shuffle them, lay them on the table, and try to match the words with the pictures. We call this the word matching game, because games are always more fun than practice, right?

Phonics matching game details

I took all the words from the word list on the last page of the Jolly Phonics activity book, and please note, I did not make cards for all the words, nor did I duplicate the word cards found in the book. When you look at the word list, it’s obvious that many of them are not something you can use a picture to match. In total, you will have 12 card pairs between the book and this free printable.

These cards are not intended to replace the word list in the back of the book. I still recommend practicing words without an image to match. Obviously, that’s real reading, which is the goal! Your child might find it helpful, though, to start out with the words on these cards to practice first. That way they remember some of the potential words from their practice with matching the pictures, making that next step a bit easier, and again building situations where they can be successful, in sha Allah. Lastly, I recommend you only start with 4 card pairs at a time. With more practice, you can present more cards in a session.