The Three Sounds of "A"

I saw a great idea on pinterest the other day that I of course had to add to my board. You just never know when you might need a great idea!


The idea was to create a parking garage for toy cars on a poster paper. In each space have a word that is being practiced (i.e. sight words).

My lil' miss HanaRose  has been learning phonetic blends. We are using the Happy Phonics program for this. Yesterday we read the 3 A's book that came with the program. HR really responds to the game portion of this program. It does have one game that is to go with this lesson, but I felt she needed a little something else. So I created The Three A's Parking Garage.

(sorry it is upside down.....maybe if you stand on your head you can read it!)

It took me about 10 minutes to make (that's my kinda project!). All I did was divide a piece of cardstock into thirds (the hot dog direction) and I labeled them with the 3 A's and level 1,2,and 3. Then I drew lines for parking spaces. In each space I wrote a word from her word list putting in the appropriate level.


Ta Dah!

We now have a 3 sounds of A game!

I had Ephraim gather up all of his hotwheels and then play it with her. They divided up the cars for their playing pieces. I pulled out a deck of cards (these ones were from Phase 10, but any numbered cards would work)  and removed the 1, 2, and 3 numbered cards along with the wilds and skips.

(Hmmmm. this one wants to be sideways, Oh well, I don't have time to try and fix it)

How to play:


Youngest player goes first.
Take turns choosing cars for playing pieces.
Each player then draws a card. The # 1 tells the player to choose a parking space in level 1 (the first sound of "A" as in "cat"); the # 2 tells the player to choose a space in  level 2 (for the second sound of "A" as in "cake"); the # 3 tells the player to choose a space in level 3 (for the third sound of "A" as in "ball"). Once the card is drawn and space chosen the player must then read the word in that space before parking. The wild and skip cards are used the same as in any other game.
The object is to fill the parking garage. If you want to play for winner, you could say the first to run out of cars, or the person with the most cars parked after it is full.

(even Lyllian had to come and check it out!)

I think my Kiddos had a good time with this simple game and will want to play it again.

I have a Top level on the other side of the paper that just has spaces around the edges, labeled with A's 1-3. I plan on having HR write her words on note cards tomorrow, then she can draw the words and park the cars in the correct "A" sound space.

Happy Day!