19+ Effective 1st Grade Flash Card Sets

First grade flash cards are a fantastic classroom resource that helps students learn fast! They reinforce learning, recall, and recognition in certain topics, even at a young age. When using them in class, it’s a good idea to print flash cards on cardstock or have them laminated. If it’s possible, print with colored ink or on colored paper to draw students’ attention. 

Some 1st grade flash card sets even come with a Word Wall or a poster set to put up in your classroom for students to reference at a glance. These are great to have in class for extra support for the students, but also act as a great backdrop for an impromptu activity! 

Table of Contents

• Are Flash Cards Good For Sight Words?
• 19 Best 1st Grade Flash Card Sets
• Check Out These Additional 1st Grade Resources

Are Flash Cards Good For Sight Words?

Even if students aren’t ready to spell a word or add it to their vocabulary list yet, there are many times where students recognize and memorize sight words, as they are developing their capacity to integrate them into their vocabulary. When teachers use flash cards to reinforce sight words, in these instances, memorization is okay and even aids in their cognitive development. 

While sight word flash cards are great and widely used, there are other subjects flash cards can support as well. In partnership with Teach Simple, whose marketplace is full of educational materials created by actual teachers (plus 50% of all revenues go to them), I have put together a list of more 1st grade flash card sets containing sight words and other topics that help reinforce core skills 1st graders are learning. Have a look!

19 Best 1st Grade Flash Card Sets

In the list below, you will find an excellent array of flash cards that are bright and colorful, have many pictures to aid in students’ understanding, and sometimes even come with worksheets, games, and other activities. 

1. Sight Words Set 1–3 Flash Cards By Have Fun Teaching

Sight Words Set 1 Flash Cards

Sight Words Set 2 Flash Cards

Sight Words Set 3 Flash Cards

These sight word flash cards offer practice for students learning standard 1st Grade vocabulary. There are three sets of flash cards that cover a ton of necessary sight words.

2. Insect Flash Cards By Have Fun Teaching

These flash cards offer practice for students learning all about insects. It has fun pictures and goes along well with any lesson plan on insects to reinforce recognition and vocabulary development.

3. Flash Cards: At The Zoo By Better Teaching Resources

This set has 78 different flashcards all about what you’ll find at the zoo! Introduce your students to some extra fun this semester with these exciting flash cards and a virtual field trip of what they may encounter at a place like the zoo. Not only do these cards let kids use their imagination but they get to practice their reading and vocab development too.

4. High-Frequency Words Flash Cards By Kindergarten Cafe

This high-frequency words resource is filled with 157 different words on 4 different word lists. They cover 1st grade Dolch vocabulary words. The cards come in four different styles with a variety of border designs as well. These cards could be used for your classroom word wall or as flash cards. 

5. 1st Grade Spelling Flashcards By Sylvan Learning

This flash card set has over 230 words to help your child develop skills in phonics and spelling as well as 10 more blank cards so your child can add personal words like family names or favorite foods. 

This set will help your child review concepts such as:

• Vowels
• Consonants
• Contractions
• -ed endings
• -ing endings
• -s or -es endings
• -er endings
• Sight words

6. School Zone – Time & Money Flash Cards By School Zone 

Kids will learn to read multiple variations of digital and analog clocks, understand money value, and add coin combinations all in this one flash card set. The set includes 25 time cards, 30 money cards and 1 parent card with more activity ideas. There are some cards where kids can even use real coins to create a more complex and hands-on understanding of how money can buy your kids’ favorite things, like an ice cream cone or popcorn.

7. Conversation Starters: At The Doctor’s Office By Love Learning Languages

This is a set of 30 printable cards perfect for ESL/ELL students as well as the rest of the class to start conversations around different symptoms that may take you to the doctor’s office. 

8. 1st Grade Math Flashcards: 240 Flashcards For Building Better Math Skills By Sylvan Learning

This flash card set provides plenty of math practice and is designed to help children catch up, keep up, and get ahead–and best of all, to have fun doing it! The box contains 230 flashcards with colorful illustrations, plus 10 blank cards that children can illustrate themselves.

This set will help your child review concepts such as:

• Addition & subtraction
• Place value
• Number patterns 
• Comparing numbers
• Geometry
• Time
• Money

9. Melissa & Doug Smarty Pants 1st Grade Card Set By

These flash cards have a whimsical design and lighthearted tone that gets kids excited about learning. The illustrated activities include trivia quizzes, problem-solving puzzles, word play, fun facts, creative story-building games, and more. And these cards were developed with educators to support the curriculum of first grade specifically.

10. School Zone – Phonics Made Easy Flash Cards By School Zone

These cards will help your child understand the sounds of letters and letter combinations, which make learning to read and spell easier. Kids will practice short and long vowel sounds like pig and pie as well as blends and combination sounds like pleasant and pheasant. 

11. Shapes Word Wall By Have Fun Teaching

These flash cards and Sight Wall help students who are learning all about shapes. Use this set with any lesson on geometry; it has all the basic shapes that students are learning about and allows them to reference the shape names often if displayed on the sight wall.

12. Numbers 0–50 With Words In Color Flash Cards By Have Fun Teaching

These colorful flash cards offer practice for students learning numbers from 0 to 50. This is an excellent aid to your first grade math class.

13. Navigation Flashcards By Fiddleticks Education

This set of 8 navigation flashcards features hand-illustrated watercolors designed to help students understand navigation and directions using an image of a compass. 

14. Money Flash Cards By Have Fun Teaching

These flash cards ask students to count their pennies and learn basic math and economics skills by understanding what each coin looks like and how cents and dollars are written out.

15. Basic Weather Flash Cards By Have Fun Teaching

These flash cards show students illustrations of all kinds of weather and then ask them to identify the weather using their vocabulary words. 

16. Grammar Flashcards: Build Plurals By Subplanners By Jean Snowden

This set of 60 picture and text flashcards include nouns, images of nouns, and different plural endings. Help students understand how plural nouns take different endings depending on their spellings with this set.

17. Kelp Forest Wildlife Flash Cards And Poster Set By Fiddleticks Education

This is a beautiful set of hand-illustrated watercolor wildlife flashcards. Each card features a detailed species illustration and the name of the animal. There are 12 cards in total. This pack also comes with a poster featuring all the animals from the flashcards. 

18. Flash Cards: At School By Better Teaching Resources

This set has 60 different sight word flash cards all about what you’ll find in the classroom and at school. Students will learn standard first grade vocabulary as they identify the world around them. 

19. Verb Flash Cards By Have Fun Teaching

These flash cards have a wide range of verb examples and are a great resource for engaging students in learning about different verbs, how they’re used, and how to form sentences around them.

In summary, flash cards are beneficial for concepts including and beyond sight words; they can be implemented into any lesson plan in any classroom environment! Whether you are looking for a great activity to start the morning and warm everyone up for the day, searching for great ways to help your students learn vocabulary words, or want to reinforce a new concept in Math, Science, or Language Arts, 1st grade flash card sets are a fantastic resource to have in your bag!

About the Author

Jen Skolsky has a background in English, Psychology, and Creative Writing. She has taught for many years in international education, including ESL for all ages, middle school literature, speech and debate; high school AP Psychology, AP Language, AP Literature; university level Academic Writing, and Chinese Medicine Theory. She now works in marketing and book publishing.