Description

Download and print 12 decks of our child-sized (5 X 6.5cm) extended code playing cards for fun reading practice. Words are printed facing both directions, so they are easily read from either side of a table.

These decks add vowel sounds and spellings to those used in previous decks, and include more two-syllable words. They focus on the following sound-spelling relationships:

• /ay/ as in “mistake”, “contain”, “holiday”, “navy”, “obey” and “great”.
• /ee/ as in “coffee”, “disease”, “secret”, “carry”, “believe”, “protein” and “compete”.
• /oe/ as in “remote”, “roast”, “follow”, “hero” and “mangoes”.
• /er/ as in “swerve”, “circle”, “burnt”, “search” and “worth”.
• /ou/ as in “aloud” and “trowel”, and /oy/ as in “point” and “destroy”.
• /oo/ as in “smooth”, “rule”, “true”, “fluid”, “jewel” and “group”.
• /igh/ as in “delight”, “despite”, “crisis”, “apply” and “allies”.
• /or/ as in “porch”, “before” and “drawn”.
• /or/ as in “stall”, “chalk”, “brought”, “daughter”, “author” and “warm”.
• /air/ as in “chair”, “declare”, “bear”, “where” and “their”.
• /ar/ as in “charm”, “past”, “calm”, “heart” and “aunt”.
• One deck of high-frequency words containing a mixture of the above sound-spelling correspondences (so that the set has a dozen decks).

These decks can be used as part of most vowel spelling teaching sequences, but most closely follow the teaching sequence used in the Phonic Books Talisman 1, Rescue, Island Adventure and Dragon Eggs series of books, and the Sounds-Write synthetic phonics program.

We suggest printing the cards on A4 200gsm cardboard, and if you plan to use them a lot, laminate them. We highly recommend that children practise their scissor skills by cutting them up, rounding the corners if a more professional look is sought. We store all our decks like this:

These cards can be used to play any card game requiring a typical deck of playing cards, but players must read the cards’ words as they play them. We’ve made some videos of example games to get you started:

• California Speed
• Spit
• Snip Snap Snorum
• War
• Beggar Thy Neighbour
• Slapjack
• Snap
• Mancala, for which you’ll also need to download our Mancala board.

We hope you enjoy using them!