CVC Word Lists – Free Printables

All of the words in our lists are real words (or at least Scrabble words) and many of them are common, but some are abbreviations and a few have informal spellings or they are slang words.  However, they are all words that can appear in literature.  (We’ve tried to avoid any potentially rude words, although meanings can differ in different locations). 

In the beginning, it’s best to stick to words that your child is familiar with.  But once they become more fluent, you can also let them try some words they haven’t heard before. 

This is important because unusual words can appear often in children’s literature (particularly for fictional character or place names).  Your child might also be tested with pseudo / nonsense words in a phonics check at school.

You will notice that we’ve included words that start with ‘qu’.  These aren’t strictly CVC words because they have an extra letter.  But many phonics programmes teach the letter combination ‘qu’ as if it’s an individual letter because q and u almost always appear together in words.

Also note that some of the words might have a different sound for the letter ‘u’ in some accents.  For example the word ‘put’ might have a different vowel sound than the one in ‘cup’.   Just use the sounds that are normal for your local accent and let your child know that the same letter can sometimes represent more than one sound.

It’s important to start your child with words that contain the most common letter-sound relationships initially.  So all of the words in our lists contain the ‘short’ vowel sounds found in words such as ‘cat’, ‘bed’, ‘pig’, ‘dog’ and ‘cup’.  We’ve also avoided words where the consonants represent alternative sounds, such as in the word ‘gym’.

We’ve compiled a list of words to avoid with beginning readers below: