Shamrock CVC Word Families Activity

Check out this fun Shamrock CVC Word Families activity to help keep the kids engaged in learning new words, sounds, and to start reading.

What are CVC words?

CVC words are single-syllable, three-letter words that are made up of a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern.

Learning CVC words is an important step to reading and there are lots of things you can do to make it fun for your preschooler. Make it a fun activity with these shamrock CVC word families activity.

How To Teach Word Families

When you teach word families, you want to start with short three letter words that contain the short “a” sound. Once they have learned the letters and sounds, you can then change up the first and last letters to create new words to learn. You can then move on to the short “i” sound and short “u” sound.

One of the easiest ways to teach word families is by using pictures or fun shapes to keep their interest. For this shamrock CVC word families activity, we have used shamrocks for the fun shapes. These can be used around St. Patrick’s Day or anytime throughout the year.

Shamrock CVC Word Families Activity Instructions

This is an easy CVC word family activity that you can put together for your preschooler. Once you’ve made the shamrock cards, you can use them over and over to practice!

Supplies Used:

• Foam shamrock shapes (we used 2 different colors – you can also use paper shamrocks)
• Marker to write the words. I like to use permanent marker.

Directions:

Download the CVC Sample Word List. This collection of words will easily get you started but you can always add more words to your shamrocks.

Using the marker, write each word family ending in the middle of a shamrock. Write only one word family ending on each shamrock. For instance, -at, -an, -it, -ug, etc.

Write the words that belong to each word family on the light green shamrocks. I used three words to match each ending.

Have the kids match words with the correct word family ending by placing them together on the colorful paper. We also like to have them read each word out loud. Sometimes, we will even have them spell the word out loud, trace them with a pencil, or write them on a piece of paper. Since children advance at different stages, those activities would depend on their skill level.

Shamrock CVC Word Families – Words To Use