80+ CVC Words with Pictures & Printable Worksheets
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This free printable cvc word list with pictures and 7 word matching worksheets help early readers practice important skills: Decoding and reading simple three letter words using memorized letter sounds and visual cues.
Why We Love It
This is the ultimate list of 80+ CVC words with pictures, organized into word families by middle letter short vowel sound!
We put together eight pages in this pdf in total: One printable page as a master list of the most common CVC words with pictures AND seven printable pages of picture and word matching worksheets. Get the pdfs below (We also have free printable CVC flashcards for more practice!).
✍️ What’s a CVC Word?
CVC stands for Consonant Vowel Consonant, so a CVC word is a three letter word that follows this pattern.
The word ‘cat’ is a great example of a CVC word. When you spell the word cat, first comes a consonant (c), then a short vowel (a), then another consonant (t).
With CVC words, the focus is solely on decoding letter sounds. And CVC words are perfect words for early readers because they can be decoded very easily.
That’s why CVC words are often used to teach closed syllables, too!
📚 Why are CVC words important?
CVC words are essential because they allow children to move from phonemic awareness (the first building block of reading) on to phonics (the second building block of reading).
Research shows that children benefit from have ample opportunities to use their decoding skills on simple words as they learn to read.
As soon as children know just a few letters and vowels, reading CVC words should begin. This typically happens within the first few months of kindergarten, but it should be practiced throughout kindergarten and the beginning of first grade.
Children begin to understand that letters are not isolated sounds, but instead are put together to build words. There is nothing like watching a child begin to practice this skill and find such satisfaction in their achievement as they make sense of letters and sounds and decode words on their own!
Children practice blending three letter sounds together in a simple way, without having to remember digraphs or recall irregular sight words. As children read CVC words, it helps solidify their recall for consonant and short vowel sounds.
We put together a list of CVC words with pictures for practice and dictating words to students, plus a CVC matching game. Together, these worksheets help children learn and practice CVC words.
🏫 Educational Focus
Age Group: The cvc word list and worksheets are great for Kindergarten – First Grade!
These worksheets can easily be used for independent or small group work. And because kids will be cutting and gluing, they help to build fine motor skills too!
📝 Using The Worksheets
CVC Word List with Pictures
This is a comprehensive printable list of the most common c v c words, separated into word families by the short vowel sound. This page was designed with two purposes in mind, one for students and one for teachers!
- Children can use the word list to practice, using the picture beside each word as a helpful hint.
- Teachers can use this page for dictation!
- You can also enlarge it during printing to make a colorful anchor chart!
CVC Words and Pictures Matching (7 pages)
The first five printable worksheets are separated by short vowel sound. This way, once you introduce a particular vowel to your child, you can use that worksheet to firm up the vowel sound and practice the skill of blending.
Examples:
- /a/ cvc words: cat, fan, ham, sad.
- /e/ cvc words: jet, ten, pen, fed.
- /i/ cvc words: bin, sit, wig, pit.
- /o/ cvc words: mom, cop, hog, bot.
- /u/ cvc words: cup, bun, bug, cut.
👉 Please note: Short /e/ and short /i/ are usually the most difficult for kids to hear, so you may want to spend some extra time on these sounds. You may want to use word-picture association cards or keywords for these tricky sounds (a – apple, e – egg, i – igloo, o – octopus, u – umbrella.)
Once all short vowels have been introduced, then use the 2 Mixed Vowel Worksheets so students can practice differentiating between short vowel sounds in CVC words. Students will match the pictures to the words AND write in the missing middle vowel!
More CVC Resources
For CVC words orthographic mapping practice, get our printable Sound Boxes (Elkonin Boxes!)
Download & Print
We’d love to hear about your experience using these printables! Drop a comment below and we’ll get back to you asap!
DOWNLOAD TERMS: All of our resources and printables are designed for personal use only in homes and classrooms. Each teacher must download his or her own copy. To share with others, please use the social share links provided or distribute the link to the blog post so others can download their own copies. Please do not save our files to a shared drive, reproduce our resources on the web, or make photocopies for anyone besides your own students. Your support in this allows us to keep making free resources for everyone! Please see our Creative Credits page for information about the licensed clipart we use. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our terms, please email us. Thank you!
Hi,
Is there an error in the mixed vowel matching? It is downloading the same as the CVC matching. Thanks!
Hi Coco, I just checked and the correct files are attached. Please try again or email us for further assistance! 🙂
I LOVET THANKS SO MUCH
Hi Karina,
We are so glad you love this resource! We hope you subscribe so you can continue getting our resources as they come out.
Katie and Laura
Hello Katie and Laura. I so much appreciate you two for saving me the stress and time on teaching my Montessori pink series and blue series scheme. God bless you beautifully.
Hi Fatima,
So glad our resources are helpful!
Katie and Laura
I printed on cardstock, cut out the pictures and I play this game with my K-1 groups (I’m a literacy tutor). They take turns blending the cvc word, then find the picture. They LOVE it!! It’s so colorful they feel like they are playing a fun game every time I take them out.
Treva,
What a great way to use this resource! We hope others read your comment and use it in the same way…so smart! Thanks for sharing 😉
Katie and Laura
I teach adult English Language Learners (ELL) and your resources are spot on!! Your pictures are not babyish and they are great as a quick resource. This gives my students access to so many words. The amount of time you have saved me is invaluable!! Thank you so much!!
Hi Tiffany,
Thank you for the positive feedback. It made our day! We try to create all of our resources based on the current research with diverse learners in mind.
Katie and Laura
Hi there, I just love your resources and your information regarding literacy, however, when I downloaded the CVC word list and then the 7 pages of CVC words and images they printed out with over half the pictures missing or the words missing. I must be doing something wrong! I hope to use the CVC words for a student (14) with a mild learning delay and your images are not too babyish and the CVC words are at his level.
I would be very grateful if you could let me know what I need to do!
Very kind regards,
Helen.
Hi Helen, that’s really strange! Can you send us an email and we can help you troubleshoot? Literacylearnblog@gmail.com.
I printed out the CVC Word List with Pictures for my students to have in their notebooks (3-ring binder). They are put in sleeve protectors or laminated (I have done both). My students can use them for a resource instead of guessing. This eliminates guessing…they are taught how to use the resource. It saves me from having to answer questions they can easily find the answer to and also allows them to keep working if I’m busy working with another student/group.
Cindy,
This is a GREAT idea! Thank you for sharing!
Katie and Laura
Love! Love! Love! Everything that I have used from you has been fantastic and spot on. My students love. Thank you for sharing!
Tami,
Thank you for the encouragement! We are so pleased to hear that you and your students are enjoying our resources. We hope you continue using them with your students.
Katie and Laura
Love these and many other worksheets.
Julie,
We are so happy to hear this great feedback! We create our resources and actually use them with students before publishing to make sure they are effective. Thanks!
Katie and Laura
I absolutely LOVE YOU GUYS, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the kind words! We’re so happy the resources are helpful for you!
Thank you so much!
You’re welcome! We hope you enjoy!
-Katie and Laura
Thank you so much for these!!!…I love them and i know my students will love them too…Thank You.
Elenoa,
We are so happy that you can use these with your students! Enjoy!
-Katie and Laura
Really interesting post! Thanks!
Our pleasure! 🙂 -Katie
This is a comprehensive list of CVC words! And the pics are great! Lots of times worksheets have pictures that even I can’t figure out what they are. Thanks a bunch.
Hi Kristy, I’m so thrilled you like these worksheets and that they’re helpful for you! -Katie