Phonics Playmakers™Built to fit into your phonics program
The Phonics Playmakers activities were designed to supplement and enhance any phonics curriculum. They offer a systematic, fun-filled series of group activities focused on phonemic awareness, blending, segmenting and decoding. Each activity has more than one use: whiteboard games, practice lessons, fillers, or the foundation for classroom games like memory match, word hunts and grouping by sound.
Because the games are visual by design, they may not cover every one of your target words — but they do offer repeated, varied word-building practice, which is genuinely helpful to any child's learning progress. Short, repeated activities let children rack up small successes one at a time, and the team element keeps them engaged while encouraging kids to help each other along the way. Our interactive games can be played as a two- or three-team race on the whiteboard, or by one player on a tablet or phone, so they suit a whole class, a small group or home practice.
The same system carries through every phonics stage, so children spend their time practicing skills they're building — not relearning how a new game works. In our own classrooms, we've seen smile after smile as each child hits a new success.
Our Approach
Born out of our desire to create a more active learning environment, Phonics Playmakers activities are built on the principles of the Science of Reading and Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP). Research shows that children learn to read most reliably when sounds and letters are taught explicitly, in a clear sequence, with plenty of practice. Our activities are designed to support exactly that kind of teaching.
- Systematic: Each stage builds on the last, moving from CVC words to blends, long vowels, vowel teams and more. Children practise skills they have already been taught.
- Synthetic: Children say each sound and blend them all the way through the word, then segment words back into their sounds.
- Phonemic awareness first: Our listening games build the ability to hear individual sounds before letters are introduced.
- Practice that sticks: Short, repeated, active games give children the frequent practice they need to read words quickly and confidently.
Phonics Playmakers is not a full phonics programme. It is designed to sit alongside the one you already use and give children more chances to practise what they’re learning.
Made by Teachers
Every Phonics Playmakers activity is designed by classroom teachers. The word lists, game structures, teaching sequence and Teacher's Master Cards all come from our own experience of teaching phonics, and each game has been played and refined with real children.
The pictures and characters are created with the help of AI image tools. We use them so that every word has a clear, colourful picture that children recognise at a glance. The teaching behind them is ours.
Building Skills and Confidence
What began as a few engaging activities evolved into a structured learning progression:
Because the structure remains familiar across activities, children don't waste time learning new rules. Instead, they can focus their energy on the phonics challenge—building both skill and confidence with every "I can!" moment.
Phonics Playmakers was created to give young learners repeated, meaningful practice through active thinking and team collaboration.
We hope your children have as much fun—and experience as many little successes—as ours have. We want those successes to build confidence and help every child believe:
“I can.”
Try It in Your Classroom
See how it works with your own learners.
Download our CVC Word Builder Sampler for free and introduce children to the process of building CVC words through beginning, middle and ending sounds.
All you need is a whiteboard and a way for children to respond—such as marker pens or letter tiles.
Try the Free CVC Word Builder Sampler →Happy learning!