Long Vowel Games for First Grade and Kindergarten

Long vowel games for first grade and kindergarten that make reading SO much fun!

Having engaging activities kids can play in order to learn and solidify their phonics skills make reading so much fun... but also teaching reading so much more fun!

If you are looking for ideas for long vowels with silent E, this post is for you. :) I have A LOT of pictures to share so be sure to scroll through!

Long Vowel Games that are so fun to practice reading words with silent e!


For these activities, kids take the 2 dice and a game board to play. They can play independently or with a partner. There are 5 versions of the game board for each long vowel (a, i, o, and u).

They take the 2 dice and roll them to make a CVCe word!

When they read the dice to figure out the word they rolled, they get to COVER that picture once on their board.

Then, it's their partner's turn to roll! Their partner rolls and covers the word they roll on their own, different board.

Whoever covers all their pictures first wins! OR whoever makes 1 full line first wins - however you want to do it! Easy differentiation built right in! If they are playing by themselves then they win when they cover their entire board. :) 

If you're playing this with your child at home, I recommend getting a board for yourself and playing. It's just like if you were playing a board game with them and most kids love a little competition and will love it if you play it with them :) 

You can use any small object to cover the picture. I personally love math cubes because they're a great size and heavy enough to stay on the page.

Another option is to have them COLOR the picture they roll!

Long vowel activities for first grade and kindergarten where kids roll the words with silent e to build and read! Such fun pictures to color while they play!


(If you spell it "colour" then, no worries, I also included a version with "UK Spelling" for you if you want these for your class)

I made all of the boards come in both a COLOR and in a COVER version so you have a lot of options!

Each vowel a, i, o, u has 5 boards with 20 pictures AND 5 boards with 12 pictures so you can also make this game much easier for beginning readers.



See how the activity looks so similar but is a much easier level? This makes it so easy to differentiate in the classroom where your students won't even notice that they have an easier level. 

If you're using these at home with your child, I'd start with these easy 12 word ones as you're learning each vowel. THEN, when you go through each long vowel again for review later, as they've built more skills and learned all of the CVCe families, pull out the 20 words boards for a challenge!

If any of your students are ready for the challenge boards, though, go for it!

I made them for vowels a, i, o, and u. I didn't make e because I don't know anyone that really teaches that sound explicitly. There aren't many words with the long E silent E sound that kids know and even fewer that have illustrative pictures so I typically skip it in my packs since it's not really taught. Or at least in my opinion. :)

So I showed you Long I! Let's look at the other vowels!

Long vowel silent E games that are such fun printable activities where kids roll, build, and read words to cover their pictures to win!


One thing I love most about these is that they focus on WORD FAMILIES so, as they play and keep rolling, they really start to memorize those chunks...

Which is AMAZING! You may remember I talked about this in my Short Vowels Word Family Rolls version of this post where I showed the short vowels version of these. Teaching sounds in word families really helps kids master the sounds faster, in my opinion, and makes it so much more automatic. I recommend trying it, especially if you have any struggling readers in your class or if you're teaching littles in general. :) 

Long a activities for reading vowel word families in a super fun and engaging way! Check these out!


See how, in the picture above this text, the dice say "wave"? You can also see another beginning sound letter is C. So they can also spell cave. You can also see "came" and that the dice could also roll "wame" which is obviously not a word. This is a GREAT thing and awesome practice for an entirely different and important reading skill - determining if a word is a real word or not.

Even though "wame" is not a word (or at least not one that is used where I am), they still have to blend it to read it. That's still blending practice and practicing sorting whether a word is a real word or not. 

If you want to extend the practice of this particular skill, you could have them fold a piece of copy paper in half then unfold it. This will create a line down the center of the paper. Have them write "Real" on the left side and "Not Real" on the right side of the paper. As they roll, have them sort and write the words. I recommend not having a writing component to this activity to keep it fun and light, but you do have that option if that's a skill you're working on specifically!

I love having these for Long O and U because those sounds, for some reason, don't seem to register as being as much fun as Long A and Long I seem to.

Long u activities and games to practice this tricky silent e sound! Fun picture support while kids roll and read words with this challenging phonics skill!


So it's nice to have these to be able to pull out and make O and U fun! I mean, how adorable is that mule? :) 


Okay, so now that you've practice the 4 sets of word families for each vowel... it's time for a challenge! Review what you've learned by adding ANOTHER piece. 

This set has 3 dice! AND practices the 4 long vowels at once!



Instead of focusing on word families with 2 dice, this set reviews ALL of the 4 long vowels you've practiced and learned.

See how you can see hive & gate in the picture above this text? This provides so much fun review.

This set has been a best seller in my TpT for years. It's a lot of fun and makes a lot of words! It does make a lot of non-words, too, so I do recommend doing the word family ones first. You can jump straight to this one, though, if you've already taught the long vowels. A lot of people have! :) 

It also comes in color and cover versions. This one has 4 easier level (12 pictures) and 3 harder level (20 pictures) game boards for easy differentiation!

Just like the word family rolls I've shown you, it also comes with teacher directions AND student friendly directions so you can make this independent during centers and to simply have a visual!

This is a great activity to do to consolidate their learning! It really helps you see if they mix up e/i (common) and little things like that. :) 

I love long vowels because they can read SO many words once they know both short and long sounds!


If you want ALL of the fun activities I showed in this post plus more, I JUST created this big bundle of them!

They are ALL also included in the even bigger Phonics Word Rolls MEGA BUNDLE as well as the Long Vowels ULTIMATE BUNDLE if you're looking for a ton of activities!

I also have each vowel available separately if you want to try out just Long A, for example, and see how your child/students like it, you can do that :) 
&
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& of course:

as well as the review CVCe center:

Thank you so much for making it all the way to the end of this post! I hope you found some fun ideas!

I have A TON of long vowels activities. I show a lot of the pages from my Long I no prep worksheets pack and how you can turn phonics worksheets (for any sound) into reusable centers in this post if you feel like looking around some more! :) 

I also have a lot of other phonics posts where I try to share a lot of teaching ideas. For example:

You can also see an organized list of my posts by category here:

I hope you find some ideas you love! You can also find all my social media on the right side of this page if you want to follow along for more! :) Thanks so much!

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