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Memory games for short a word families

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matching games for short a

Now that she knows all her letters and sounds and has other important pre-reading skills, I’ve been teaching my daughter (4 years, 9 months) to read short vowel words.

I’m not going to tell you she’s been jumping up and down about it.

In fact, until recently, she didn’t want to learn at all.

What made the difference was teaching her to blend sounds using successive blending (I have a video here all about it if you want to try it.)

Once she figured that out, reading words has been much more fun for her. To take it a step further, I created a simple matching game featuring CVC words with short a (the only short vowel we’ve practiced so far).

matching games

I don’t know what it is about matching games, but they’ve always been a big hit with my kids. My Six, who was also reluctant to learn to read, actually begged for more matching games. It’s how I helped him learn his sight words.

 

Watch the quick video above to see the activity in action.

 

child playing matching game

The great thing about memory games is that they’re very simple to make. Just cut index cards in half and write a match on each half.

Since I decided to create a game using pictures, writing on index cards wasn’t going to work for me. (Drawing is just not one of my gifts.) So I created this simple game on my computer.

The download has 16 different matching games. The corner of each card tells you the set that it belongs to so you don’t mix them up.

child playing matching game

I recommend printing each set on a different color of cardstock. This way you can easily sort them.

Here are the word families featured in each game:

  • Game 1 – at
  • Game 2 – at, ap
  • Game 3 – ap, ag
  • Game 4 – at, ag
  • Game 5 – ad, ag
  • Game 6 – ap, ad
  • Game 7 – at, ap, ad
  • game 8 – ap, ab
  • Game 9 – ag, ab, at
  • Game 10 – an, ab
  • Game 11 – an, ag, ab
  • Game 12 – am, an
  • Game 13 – am, an, ag
  • game 14 – at, ab, am
  • Game 15 – at, an, am
  • Game 16 – at, ab, am, an, ag, ap

I hope your learners love this game as much as my preschooler does!

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Reader Interactions

35 Comments

    • Heather Groth, Customer Support

      Hello Cate! The link is still active, and when you click the yellow “Click to Download” button, the pdf of the matching game should pop right up. You may want to try disabling your ad-blocker, or accessing the post from a different web browser or device. If you try this and are still having difficulty, please email us at hello@themeasuredmom.com so we make sure you can get access to this resource! Thank you!

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  4. Cesia

    Hi Anna,
    Would it be possible to have a set of memory games but for vowel teams? And thanks again for being so generous in sharing all these great resources with us!! Have a good one.

    Reply to this comment

  6. Susan

    Thanks so much for these great games! I”ve printed them ALL out and can’t wait to start using them with my little learners.

    I did notice one mistake – Game 10 for “i” is exactly the same as Game 9 for “i”.

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