Long Vowel EE Phonics Game: Pick the Apples

Pick the Apples: ee Phonics Game

Give early readers a hands-on way to master the "ee" long vowel sound with this print-and-play phonics game. Designed for children who are ready to move from single-sound decoding into vowel digraphs, "Pick the Apples" turns repeated practice into a game children genuinely want to play.

How to play:

Each player has a tree baseboard covered in ten blank apples. Word cards and two "bad apple" cards are scattered face down on the table. Players take turns choosing a card: land on a word card and read it correctly, and you get to pick an apple from your tree and place it in your basket. Pick a bad apple, and you miss a turn. The first player to clear all ten apples from their tree wins.

How it helps:

The 16 target words — see, bee, week, feed, been, feet, tree, free, seen, sleep, green, steep, meet, sweet, seed — are all built around the "ee" spelling of the long vowel sound, with no competing spelling patterns to confuse a child who's only just meeting this grapheme. That tight focus is what makes the game so effective for building genuine fluency rather than lucky guessing.

How to use:

This is a 4-page download: print onto card, cut out the trees, apple cards and word cards, and you're ready to go. No laminating or special equipment required, though laminating will extend the cards' lifespan for repeated classroom use.

Who is it for?

Suitable for one-to-one phonics intervention, small guided reading groups, or home tutoring, the game works well as a fluency-building activity once "ee" has been introduced, or as a revision tool later on. It pairs naturally with any structured synthetic phonics scheme and requires no prior knowledge of this resource's parent programme to use.