This fun, printable Alphabots phonics game invites children to match lowercase and uppercase letters with beginning sounds, with the help of some super cute Alphabots!
Learning to read and write is a process containing many moving parts, each of which takes time and plenty of practice to master. Developing phonemic awareness and phonics skills are both important elements of this process.
What is phonemic awareness? What is phonics?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds in words. These individual sounds are called phonemes. Also important is the ability to match a phoneme to its corresponding grapheme. A grapheme is the letter or small group of letters (e.g. /ai/ as in train and /igh/ as in night) that represent a sound. The process of learning to match phonemes to graphemes is known as phonics.
Why play phonics games with early readers? Playing simple phonics games, such as our Letter Sound Matching Game or Alphabet Mazes, as well as the Alphabots resource featured here, provides opportunities for children to reinforce learning about these important letter sound relationships, or phonics skills. Plus they make learning fun, and learning that is fun is much more engaging and therefore more likely to stick!
Printable Alphabots Phonics Game
You can print a copy of this free Alphabot alphabet game using the instructions provided below.
The game helps children identify phonemes (letter sounds) in the initial position of a word, and then match each phoneme (sound) to its corresponding graphemes (letters), both uppercase and lowercase.
The set includes 26 Alphabots, each composed of three parts – a head and speech bubble card featuring a capital letter, a stomach with picture panel featuring a picture that represents a single syllable word for the corresponding letter, and a leg and feet card with a small alphabot friend displaying the lowercase letter form.
Instructions for Playing the Alphabots Phonics Game
First decide how many Alphabots your child will play with. The complete set of 26 alphabots (each robot has 3 parts) may be too many, depending upon the age, experience and literacy development of your child. You could start with the game cards that correspond to the letters of your child’s name, or choose just five to ten letters to explore each time you play.
Once you have chosen which Alphabots to play with, mix up the pieces, displaying them face up on the table top.
Invite your child to choose one Alphabot body to begin. Ask them to tell you the name of the object shown on the Alphabot’s stomach screen. Ask them to tell you which sound they can hear at the beginning of the word. Then invite them to find the corresponding Alphabot head (showing the uppercase letter) and feet (lowercase letter).
Continue matching the three parts of each Alphabot until they are all complete.
Printing Your AlphaBOT Phonics Match
Click here to download: Alphabots Alphabet Matching Game. Save the PDF to your computer. Open the PDF and print the page you require. When printing, select “Fit to printable area” (or similar) to ensure the page fits with your printer type and local paper size (these have been created at A4 size). I suggest printing onto card stock or matte photo paper. Laminate the printed cards for durability.
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Please note: All Childhood 101 printables are for personal use only, you may not use any part of this content for commercial purposes-that includes selling the document, giving it away to promote your business or website, or printing the file to sell. You may not share, loan or redistribute these documents. Teachers may use multiple copies for students in their own classroom.
For more printable alphabet activities, check out these related resources:
Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
