CVC Words

Free CVC word lists, printables, worksheets, flashcards, charts, games, and assessments for students learning to read phonics and word families. We’ve created a variety of tools you can use to teach your child to read at home with very little expense. If you’re looking for a more robust, planned for you curriculum, check out our Kindergarten Reading Curriculum for a complete 36-week program covering kindergarten phonics, sight words, grammar, writing, and more.

What are CVC Words?

CVC words are single-syllable, three-letter words that consist of a consonant-vowel-consonant letter pattern. For example, cat, fan, tab, mug are all CVC words because they are all three letters, can be said in one syllable, and follow the consonant-vowel-consonant letter pattern. The vowel sound in the middle of the word is always the short vowel sound. Students might learn CVC words as part of a phonics program (words that can be phonetically sounded out) or when learning word family rhyming words like -at words (cat, hat, sat, fat etc…). We have a complete, free List of CVC words, including a printable PDF version of each short vowel sound.

When to Teach CVC Words:

Before you can teach your child to read, you want to ensure they have hit a few reading benchmarks. Even though CVC words are generally all lowercase letters with short vowel sounds, before starting lessons on learning to read we suggest your student be able to complete the following tasks.

Recognize all lowercase letters
Recognize all uppercase letters
Know letter sounds for all consonants
Know the five short vowel sounds
Know the five long vowel sounds

All students learn at their own unique pace, so you are the best judge of when to teach your child to read. As a general guideline, most of these pre-reading skills are covered during the preschool year, thus making CVC words and learning to read an important focus during the kindergarten year. If you need to review the alphabet with your student, we have hundreds of alphabet worksheets and activities available.

How to Teach CVC Words:

After students have a grasp on consonant letter sounds and short vowel sounds, you can begin to introduce common c-v-c words. C-V-C words are an important first step for students who are learning to read as each letter sound can be sounded out individually, then blended together to form a word. Often teachers will scaffold CVC words based on the medial vowel sound. For example, teaching students all the CVC words with the short A middle sound first. Additionally, students will begin to recognize sound patterns with rhyming word families that will build confidence and speed up reading skills. We have a variety of free printable resources for learning CVC words below:

CVC Word Lists

CVC Word Lists for students learning short vowel sounds. These free printable C-V-C charts feature a single short vowel on each word list, organized by word family. Your student will learn to read with these free phonics printables.

CVC Flashcards

Free printable CVC flashcards for students learning to read with phonics. Each printable flashcard set covers a collection of word family words your students can learn to read. Medial vowel sounds are colored red for easy reading of short vowels.

CVC Words Worksheets

Free printable CVC words worksheets, games, and printable activities for learning to read word families. We have a variety of c-v-c word search puzzles, cut and paste activities, phonics color by number, spin a CVC word game and more.

CVC Words Assessment

Test and report student growth with our free printable CVC assessment. We include assessment tools for all five short vowel sounds as well as teacher reports to monitor student progress with each quarter of the school year.

Tools For Teaching CVC Words:

Learning to read should be fun! The more hands-on elements you can include with your lessons, the more engaged your students will be, and the more they will remember! There are many educational studies that suggestion student engagement is correlated with retention and recall–it’s one of the reasons we develop our curriculum with so many hands-on learning opportunities. There are also some amazing manipulatives available that can help you setup fun and enticing phonics learning centers.