The long e sound is represented in a few different ways in English – these include ‘e’ (like in ‘he‘), ‘ee’ as in ‘see‘, and ‘ea’ as in ‘beach’.
This ‘Who Has It?’ game teaches and reinforces the ‘ee’ way of spelling this long vowel sound.
In this game, there is a lot of practice in reading words with ‘ee’ in them. It is also a quick way to make sure that you child or student recognizes the ‘ee’ spelling.
Jump straight to the free printable downloads
Vowel Sounds Background Information
Vowels can make two sounds, typically called a long sound and a short sound. The long sound is it’s name and the short sound is it’s sound.
Children first learn that vowels are written using their alphabet letters – a, e, i, o, u.
As they progress in reading, they learn that two vowels can come together in a ‘vowel team’, or a vowel digraph. These teams provide alternative spellings for vowel sounds.
Below are some of the ways vowels team up together to spell vowel sounds:
- a: ai,
- e: ee, ea
- i: ie
- o: oa, oe
- u: ue, ui, oo
The long and short sounds of vowels can be difficult to write about, but this short video is a great way to hear the difference.
Related content: Letters and Sounds Explained, Blending and Segmenting
Learning ‘ee’ is a good place to start when learning vowel teams, because this spelling of the long e sound is fairly simple – just the letter repeated.
It is also a frequently used spelling of the long e sound, and so once children know it, a lot more words open up for them to read.
The Basic Idea in this Long E Sound Game
The basic idea is a simple card game. You turn over cards, and try to collect as many as you can by matching them with the cards you have.
*If you would like help to know if this ‘Who Has It?’ activity is right for your child or student, click here for information to help you decide.
‘Who Has It?’ Long E Sound Game
What you will need:
- Two different colors of card or paper,
- A list of words you want to use, 20-30 words is a good amount,
- Two ‘It’s a Match!’ cards.
*In the resources section of this post, there are some free long e sound word lists, printable sets of words cards, and two ‘It’s a match’ cards to use with this game.
How to play the game:
- Make – or print out – two sets of word cards. Put each set on a different colored card:
- Give each player an ‘It’s a Match’ card.
- Put one set or word cards (e.g. the green set) in a pile between the two players, face down.
- Next, give 6 cards to each player from the other set (e.g. the white set). and then put the remaining cards in a separate pile, face down:
- Take turns to turn over a card from the green set. Read the word.
- Both players check their hand of 6 cards. If one player has a card with the same word as the one that has been turned over, then they match. They can take both cards and set them down on their ‘It’s a match’ card. They need to take another card from the white set so that they always have 6 cards in their hand:
- If no one has a match, turn the next card over. If that card has a match, then just take the card that matches, not the whole pile of previous cards. Or, if you want to add in more completion, you could take the whole pile.
- Play continues until there are no more cards left to draw in the green pile.
- Count how many cards each player has on their ‘It’s A Match’ card.
- *As you read the cards, make sure to check your child or student understands the meaning of the word – for example, ‘see’ does not have the same meaning as ‘sea’ even though they sound the same and have the same long e sound.
To Note
Not every game or activity goes to plan! Here are some things to watch out for:
- The great thing about this game is that it is so simple. It is quite gentle and not very competitive, and so it is all about the reading of the words. When you play until there are not more green cards to turn over, you will see it is possible to keep drawing from the discarded green pile, and each player will eventually match all their cards. I sometimes play it until this point if my student loses and is sad about it.
How to Adapt
Take it Outside: You can easily turn this game into a hunt, using the two sets of cards you have. First, hide one first set around the outdoor area. Then each choose two cards from the second set and see if you can find it’s match outside. The first one to find both their matches wins.
Change the words: Either add in more challenging ‘ee’ words, with blends or other digraphs (there’s some word lists for this in the free resources section below), or change the vowel team you are using – for example use ‘ay’ words.
Here’s how it looked when I did it in ‘real life’!
This is how the game looked at the end, after the last green card had been turned over:
Resources
Printable Resources:
‘Who Has it?’ Long E Sound Word Lists and Came Cards
Related Content:
The following posts are also about blending and segmenting words to read:
The following posts are about words that use digraphs and/or vowel teams:
Is this Long e Sound game right for my child?
Sometimes, it can be difficult to know if an activity will be helpful for your child or student. For this activity, the questions below might help:
- Does your child know the letters of the alphabet, and the sounds they make?
- Can they sort letter flashcards into vowels and consonants?
- Can they give the name and sound of each vowel? For example ‘a’ says /a/.
- Have they started to learn that one sound can be represented by more than one letter. For example that ‘ck’ makes one /k/ sound?
- Have they begun to read words with two letter sounds in them? For example ‘check’, ‘this’ and ‘shed’.
If the answer is ‘yes’ to these questions, then this ‘Who Has It? Long E Sound’ activity will be a great way to teach or reinforce the recognition of ‘ee’ vowel team.
