Phonemic awareness and the ability to blend and segment sounds in words is a prerequisite skill for any child beginning to read and write. Blending involves pulling together the individual sounds within words and segmenting involves breaking words down into their individual sounds.

If you would like more information about phonemic awareness, you can read more about this essential skill here.

Cross the river is a fun game you can play with your class to develop the phonemic awareness skills of blending and segmenting sounds. The children in my class love to play this phonemic awareness game and I love it too!!

This game allows children to practise blending and segmenting three sounds of a CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word. It is also a great tool for me to do some phonemic awareness testing. I can observe and mentally make note of those children that have mastered the skill of blending 3 sounds. I look for the ablility to blend and segment 3 sounds as one of the signs that children are ready for explicit lessons in both reading and writing.

How to Play

We play this game on the carpet space in our classroom. The children make 2 equal lines. One of the lines sit themselves along one side of the carpet space, and the other line of children sit opposite them on the other side of the carpet space.

I then give each child a CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant) picture card. You can download the picture cards I use for this game from my FREE Resource Library.

While I am giving out the pictures, I encourage the children to look at their picture and to tell a friend sitting next to them, in segmented sounds, what picture they have. For example, if a child has a picture of a sun, they would turn to the friend next to them and segment the word sun into 3 sounds – s/u/n.

Once every child has a picture, we are ready to play.

This game is called cross the river because the children are actually sitting along the sides of a make-believe river. It is their job to cross the river and find a safe place to sit on the opposite bank. I walk up and down each bank and randomly choose one of the children’s pictures. I segment their picture’s name out loud. If I see a child has a fox picture, I say “/f/…/o/…/x/”

I encourage every child to blend those three sounds quietly in their head, trying not to say the word out loud. The child that has the picture of the fox needs to jump up and cross the river by running across the river carpet space and finding an empty spot on the opposite riverbank. This child sits in the new spot and the game continues with me segmenting the next picture-word.

My class just love playing Cross the River. Children are always up for a game that involves movement!!

Game Variations

This game can be played many different ways.

Instead of the children blending the 3 sounds you have segmented, the child could cross if their picture rhymes with a word the teacher says. For example, the child with the fox picture could cross when the teacher says box.

You could just give the initial sound of their picture as another game variation. The children with both the fox and fan picture cards would cross the river at the same time when the teacher makes the /f/ sound. In another variation, the teacher could change to making either the final or medial sounds of the picture cards. The children get very excited when more than one child needs to cross the river at any one time – which will happen if you play one of these game variations.

You are not bound to using just these CVC pictures. You could give the children number representations – cards with the numerals, words and pictorial ten-fames or tally marks of numbers.

What’s another way you can think of to use this fun Cross the River game with your class? I’d love you to comment below with your ideas.

Don’t forget to check out all the educational resources in my FREE Resource Library HERE and while you are there, download yourself a set of the CVC picture cards. I know your class will love playing Cross the River as much as we do.