Bottle Cap CVC Word Building Centers

Building CVC words is so much fun with bottle caps! I absolutely love bottle caps for literacy and math centers which you may remember from my Secret Sight Words post a few years ago so I wanted to show you one of my favorite ways to use them.

Building words! For this short vowels center, I made 160 different CVC words. 

All 160 words come in SIX different versions:

- All letters are missing (3 empty circles) so they build the entire word

- Just the beginning sound is missing (shown directly below)

- Just the ending sound is missing

- Just the middle sound (vowel sound) is missing

- The beginning and ending sound are missing

- No letters are missing so they just match letters

Bottle Cap CVC Words Centers

Since every CVC word card comes in 6 different levels, you can really easily differentiate it for your class or use them to practice certain skills. For example, if you're practicing beginning sounds, you could use all of those cards for the different short vowel sounds OR just the short e cards if that is the vowel you're practicing at the time or however you want to use them.

I made the cards by word family so if you teach short vowels in word families then you can use the cards just for that word family to practice with. For example, these are some of the cards for the -at word family:

Like I said, every card comes in 6 versions so this is the beginning sounds version. You could practice the -at word family with any of the levels. You could have your on level kids do this one as a center, your below level kids simply match the letters that are on the card by putting bottle caps on top of them, have your advanced level kids do the beginning & ending sound cards (where only the a is in the middle and they figure out the initial/final sounds on the card), and then use the 3 empty circle cards to practice segmenting sounds in small groups. They're great teaching tools. :) 

You can also use alphabet magnet letters to put in the circles if you prefer. The ones I show you in this post are the ones that I use and fit well enough in the circles. Not perfectly as you can see below but they work well with the center. :) 

The alphabet letters are fun and colorful but I love bottle caps because you can make as many as you need. Just ask your parents for their water bottle caps and bring yours from home and use a permanent marker to write letters on them. 

Like I was saying about the 3 blank circle versions, they are great word building practice in small groups. I love them for segmenting the individual sounds in a word.

You can also practice the missing initial sounds and final sounds cards in small groups. They're awesome for making kids think about what comes at the beginning of the word and what they hear at the end. 

You can also use them as an independent center. 

Once your kids know all of the vowel sounds, I recommend using the middle sounds cards to practice what vowel sound the word is making. This can get tricky, especially with short i and e, so it's a fantastic center to practice it, especially for struggling students.

Once your kids have done all of the cards as centers or small group activities, you can always just throw these cards into a bin as a free choice center. You can mix them all up by vowels and type so they can just do the ones they want. 

If you put your box of alphabet magnet letters in the center, that makes it a really popular choice as well! 

So anyway! This is one of my favorite short vowel activities for working with words and you can get ALL of these cards in the Bottle Cap Centers CVC Words bundle!

I mean how cute is this cub?? 

If you love these, I also have these for a ton of other sounds in these packs:
Long Vowels CVCe 
Beginning Blends CCVC 
Ending Blends 
Digraphs
Bossy R 
Vowel Teams
Alphabet Letters
which are all included in the Phonics Bottle Cap Centers bundle along with these CVC ones! :) 

I also have Sight Word Sentences Bottle Cap Centers!

& I even have Bottle Cap Math Centers!

Can you tell I love bottle cap activities? :)

If you love this, you may also love these posts:

CVC Words Roll

Short A Activities & Resources (has a TON of ideas for short vowels centers and activities)

Tips for Building Reading Fluency

Also - don't forget to join Miss Giraffe's Class so you never miss out on fun ideas and exclusive free stuff from me only for subscribers!

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