Four-in-a-row games for beginning blends

Beginning blends can be tricky for new readers.  I’ve already shared beginning blend clip cards, a follow the path game for beginning blends, and more.  Today it’s time for another set of printables!

My Five (he’ll be a kindergartner soon!) is starting to take off with his reading.  He can read quite a few beginning books using his phonics knowledge and context clues.  But he still stumbles on basic phonetic words when he rushes through them.

I created this set of games to slow him down.  They really make him focus on the letters within words and give extra practice with those tricky beginning blends.

Does the game look a little familiar?  It might remind of you of the classic game, Connect Four.  It’s designed to be just like it.

Here’s how to play this 2-person game:

1. Collect round playing pieces for each player. Make sure you each have a different color.  We used these clear transparent counters, which have proven to be a great manipulative for so many activities.

2. Take turns reading a word. If you read it correctly, you may cover it with one of your pieces.

3. Whoever gets four in a row first, wins!

Yup, it’s that simple.

My Five is a wonderful, smiley kid, but I have to admit he doesn’t jump up and down when I say I have a new learning game for him. He’d rather play legos.  But he loved this one and asked to play it a few times.

It didn’t hurt that he won the first two rounds. 😉

As we played, I gave him lots of tips to help him play well.  For example,

“Look – I almost have four in a row!  You better stop me!  Which word should you read?”

“You almost have four in a row – where do you see it?”

I also bent my rule that you have to read the word correctly on the first try.  If he was close, I gave him another go.

You can print the color version or the black and white.   As it turned out, we liked the black and white version best because it was fun to dot our words with Do-a-Dot markers.  It saves on color ink, too.

So what will you get in the bundle?

• Game 1: l-blends (bl, cl, gl)
• Game 2: l-blends (fl, pl, sl)
• Game 3: r-blends (br, cr, dr)
• Game 4: r-blends (fr, gr, pr, tr)
• Game 5: s-blends (sc, sm, sn, sk, sp, st, sw)
• Game 6: All l-blends
• Game 7: All r-blends
• Game 8: All blends

That’s eight free games in both color and black white!  We hope you love them!

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