Let's face it, the silent e is tricky. It doesn't make a sound, but changes the way earlier vowels in the word are pronounced. Ugh. What a pain for beginning readers!
To give my son some practice pronouncing words that are transformed with a silent e, I designed a fun game to play together: Climb With Me Up the Silent E Apple Tree.
What You Need to Play FREE 5-page PDF (available on Google Drive
here)
Heavyweight card stock
Paper cutter or scissors
Tape
Die
Different game pieces for each player (we used buttons)
Prep Print the PDF on the card stock. Since your home printer won't print full bleed (i.e. all the way to the edge of the paper), trim off the white strip on the bottom of page 1 and top of page 2. Tape these pages together to form your apple tree game board.
Cut out all of the word cards and place face down in a pile under the tree.
How to Play Place both game pieces on the word START at the base of the tree. The youngest player rolls the die first and moves their game piece the number of spaces rolled.
If the player lands on an apple, they draw a card. They must pronounce the word with AND without the silent e. If they do this correctly, they can advance two more spaces.
HINT: I like to remind my son that while the ending e is silent, it makes the say it's name. In other words instead of the
i in pine making the
ih sound, it literally makes the
eye sound.
If they land on an empty circle, they stay put.
If they land on an apple core, they must move back the number of spaces indicated.
Play alternates between players. If a player lands on a space where a branch points them up or down the board to another space, they must move their game piece to wherever the end of the arrowed branch points.