Phonics Concentration Game

Here are rules for playing and making your own phonics concentration game. It's useful and fun for both new and remedial students. You can either make your own cards with 3 X 5 cards or print out the PDF files at the bottom of this page on cardstock. For the files at the bottom, print 3 each of the 1's and 2's for the "Concentration Game Back" file, 6 pages total. The lesson numbers are correlated to the free online phonics lessons numbers (The Phonics Page, or TPP) and Blend Phonics (BP) unit numbers.

Phonics Concentration

2-4 players

Rules of Play:

Spread out 20 - 40 cards total, half 1’s and half 2’s, number side up. Put the 1’s on the left, the 2’s on the right. The youngest player goes first. The first player draws one 1 card and one 2 card. Then, they put the cards letter side up and sound out the word. The player gets 1 point for correctly sounding out the word, and an additional point of the word is a real word spelled correctly. The player keeps all cards that have been properly sounded out. If the word is sounded out incorrectly, the player gets 0 points and has to put the cards back. For example: kat or mip sounded out correctly is 1 point because they’re not correct words. Dig or tip sounded out correctly are worth 2 points. Play until all the cards are gone. You can see a movie of the phonics concentration game being played here (5 minutes, 1.6 mB.)

The cards can also be used as flash cards with the student saying the sound, not the name or names, of the letters.

Here are the Letters to use. The beginning sounds get a 1 on the back, the ending sounds get a 2 on the back. You can cut 3 X 5 cards in half and use them. Put the starting letters towards the right side of the card and the ending sounds towards the left so they’ll match up well.

Beginning sounds (put a 1 on their backs, and underline these):

d d f l m n p p s t b b h j k r

y z v w bl cl fl gl pl sl spl sn sm st str sp

br cr dr fr gr pr tr shr spr ph qu sw d d f l

m n p p s t b b h j k r

Ending sounds (put a 2 on their backs, you don’t need to underline these):

in ip ig ick ist id ad aft an ap at ash od og om on

ock ond ed eff esh est end eck un um ud up ush ust ake ame

ain ail ait ay ete eed een eat ike ide igh ite ipe ine oke ote

oat oak ube ute uke oin oil oy ool all ell ill