Give your phonics lessons a playful upgrade with this fast-paced I Spy Flip Board Game: Short Vowel E Edition!
Designed with early readers, ELLs, and speech students in mind, this engaging game brings short vowel 'E' practice to life with colorful illustrations and interactive gameplay that reinforces phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and visual scanning.
Whether you're teaching in a classroom, working with small groups, or homeschooling your own littles, this hands-on sensory game makes practicing early reading skills feel like FUN instead of work!
What’s Included in the I Spy Short Vowel E Game Set:
10 vibrant I Spy game boards filled with short vowel ‘e’ images
40 image-word cards featuring words with short vowel E (like elf, exit, sled, vet, egg, and red)
20 star tokens for point tracking or rewards
Easy-to-follow instructions with multiple ways to play
Each board is packed with cheerful illustrations that reinforce both CVC words and early two-syllable short ‘e’ words, helping children build their sound-to-symbol recognition in a way that’s accessible and exciting.
Skills Covered
Primary Academic Skills:
Short Vowel E Sound Recognition Practice identifying short e in initial, medial, and two-syllable words with visual support.
Phonemic Awareness & Decoding Boost segmenting and blending skills for short vowel sounds through fast-paced, repetitive gameplay.
Visual Discrimination Strengthen attention to detail and scanning skills by matching image cards to busy game boards.
Vocabulary Development Reinforce common and thematic words for expressive/receptive language growth.
Secondary Life Skills & SEL:
Turn-taking and Cooperation Foster positive social interactions during structured peer play.
Expressive Language Use the picture-word cards as conversation prompts to describe or create sentences.
Attention and Focus Keep high-energy kids engaged as they race to "spy" and match the correct word card.
The Short Vowel 'E' I Spy Board Games are Perfect For:
Literacy or math center warm-ups– Use the game to kick off your small group time with a high-energy activity that gets kids thinking and engaged before diving into lessons.
RTI or small group work – Great for targeted practice! The visual discrimination and vocabulary connection make it ideal for intervention groups needing focused support.
Early finishers or rainy day fun– Keep those fast finishers busy (and happy!) with a meaningful game that reinforces skills without feeling like extra work.
Homeschool learning – Easy to prep and reuse, it adds hands-on play to your homeschool routine while supporting visual perception, attention, and vocabulary.
ELL students– The visual clues and image-to-word matching are perfect for supporting English Language Learners as they build vocabulary and connect words to real-world objects.
How to Play the Short Vowel 'E' I Spy Game:
Choose one game board and place it in the center of the group.
Deal image cards face-down in a stack to each player.
Flip and spy! Players turn over their top card and race to find the matching picture.
First to spot the image wins a token!
Play continues until all cards have been flipped. The player with the most tokens wins!
Additional Play Options
Independent Play: Let students match the full deck of short vowel E cards to a single board. They can cover each image with a mini eraser or token to mark matches.
Parallel Play: Use two boards side by side for quiet partner practice. Each player flips a card and finds the match on their own board.
Therapy Adaptations: Use in speech therapy or occupational therapy to target articulation of short E words or visual-motor skills like pointing, scanning, and tracking.
Perfect For:
This I Spy Short Vowel 'E' game is super versatile and fits easily into a variety of classroom and at-home routines.
Literacy centers and guided reading warm-ups
RTI and small group interventions
Speech therapy articulation games
Occupational therapy visual scanning practice
ESL/ELL vocabulary reinforcement
Homeschool morning baskets
Early finisher activities
Sub tub plans or no-prep day fillers
Rainy day or indoor recess fun
Simply print, laminate, cut, and go! The small storage size makes it super easy to keep everything in one place.
Standards Alignment:
✔ Texas Pre-K Guidelines:
Builds foundational language, communication, and phonological awareness skills through play and vocabulary engagement.
✔ Virginia ELDS:
Supports sustained attention, early literacy development, and cooperative play during meaningful activities.
✔ Common Core ELA Standards:
RF.K.2d: Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme words
RF.K.3a: Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant and short vowel
SL.K.1a: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups
L.K.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations and reading activities
Check out what other educators are saying:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Christine H. wrote: “I used this as a vocabulary game with my RTI group. It was great to have new types of words… and a good tool to see which students could grasp words and images quickly.”
Keep Building Phonics Skills Through Play
This Short Vowel E I Spy game isn’t just a literacy center... it’s a game your students will beg to play again and again!
Add it to your literacy stations, sub plans, or intervention kits for a low-prep tool that’s packed with high-impact learning.
You’ll love how easy it is to implement and your students will love how fun it is to play!
📥 Download Info:
This is a digital download: no physical items will be shipped.
I love the "Flip" activities. They're always colorful and engaging. These activities reinforce childrens use of language, labeling, identifying of vocabulary associated with specific themes. My students in the past have loved the Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall flip, so when I wanted to update my beginning of the school year activities I happened to find the September themed one and knew I had to purchase it. I laminate my mats and have the kids cover the images with colored small or large game chips, vase jewels or playdough. If the images on the mats are too busyi make sure to uave extra copies for the kids to engage in matching the images. The kids love it!
I am greatly appreciative of this content. I have developmentally delayed preschool baby 3-5 year olds and this really is helping them a lot. I wish I had pictures, but I don't yet.
Great game. My students love it and my kids at home. Lots of fun times playing this game. I love the variety in boards. My suggestion for customers is to print it on cardstock so you can't see through the cards.
My kindergarten students are using these clip cards as a review activity in our morning bins. This is a fun review activity that also helps build fine motor skills.