Build Words With Letter Lego Blocks and CVC Word Cards

Combine spelling practice and word recognition with Legos! Find out how we made these letter Lego blocks and download the free printable CVC word cards so you can practice building some words.

Letter lego blocks and CVC site word cards

This project is a collaboration with Cricut – I was gifted a Cricut Maker and accessories to try out.
This post contains affiliate links.

If you’ve got a young child, they might have a list of sight words or CVC words to learn. Practicing decoding and writing these words is important for beginning readers and writers, but lists, and flash cards and spelling drills can be kinda boring, so we came up with a fun, hands-on, way to practice these early reading and writing skills. We made some letter Lego blocks.

These letter Lego blocks are a fun, hands on way, to work on all those skills. Instead of writing words, which some kids my find difficult or boring, with these simple letter Lego blocks you can build words!

Lego letter blocks making the word pig

Sight words are high-frequency words that kids learn to read from memory, quickly, without having to decode them. Building sight words is a great way to help kids remember them.

CVC words are words that have the ‘consonant – vowel – consonant’ pattern – so think of words like ‘cat’, ‘bug’, ‘mop’ etc. CVC words follow basic phonics rules, meaning each letter makes its sound, and learning to decode them, break them up and ‘blend’ them back together is an important first step in reading.

These letter Lego blocks are perfect for practicing CVC words because you can easily change around the letters in a word. That’s great for learning to break up the words into their different sounds (segmenting) and then you can change one letter to see how that changes the word (blending).

It’s easy to make a set of letter Lego blocks, and once you’ve got a set you can do so much with them.

If your child is practicing sight words this list of fun ways to practice sight words at home has some more great ideas for kids.

If your kids are working on CVCe words – words that end with a ‘magic e’ (a silent e that makes the vowel ‘say it’s name’) – then this free CVCe word list printable is super useful and can also be used with these Lego letter blocks.

Lego letter blocks making cvc word blends

How to Make Letter Lego Blocks

You can use Legos or Duplo blocks to make your letter blocks. Legos are good if you want to make lots of letter blocks, and especially good for slightly older kids. We went with Duplo blocks as they are a good size, and we had a big tub of them that my kids had outgrown, so this was a good way to bring them back to life.

In the ‘good old days’ when my older kids were little we simply used a sharpie to write letters onto the blocks. But the sharpies wear off quite quickly, so you might prefer a more hardwearing option.

duplo blocks with letter stickers and cvc word cards on stand

Using your Cricut (or other cutting machine) to cut vinyl letters is a quick and easy way to make letter legos that will last, and a much easier option if you are wanting to use Legos rather than duplos, because it’s really hard to write small enough for a Lego!

To make Letter Legos with your Cricut Maker you’ll need:

How to Make the Letter Blocks

Start by opening Design Space and opening a new canvas.

Select text and type in lowercase letters from a to z. Take a look at the word lists you are planning to use the blocks with and see what letters are repeated most often and add in some extra letters if you need to. With beginning CVC words there are not many with double letters so they should be easy to spot.

If you want to use your blocks with multiple word lists, the simplest thing is to make 2 of each letter, that will cover pretty much all beginner words.

Now select a font for your letters that has a clear lowercase alphabet that is easy for kids to read. In particular look for a font that has a and g the way your child would learn to write them at school. Make sure it’s a single layer font for cutting.
I used Everyday Fonts – A is for Alice for our letter legos.

cricut design space alphabet

Measure the size of the block you want to stick the letters to. A regular square lego has a flat side that is, and a square duplo block has a side that is approx 3x2cm. Make sure you set your font to a size that will fit on whichever blocks you chose, check that tall letters and letters with ‘tails’ will fit, and check m and w because they are wide!

Your text should already be grouped so now all you have to do is cut it out.

I used black permanent vinyl, because that’s what I had available, but any adhesive vinyl will work for this project.

sticking cricut vinyl letters to duplo blocks

Once you’ve cut out all your letters, weed out the excess vinyl and you are ready to stick them on your blocks. You can simple peel and stick on the letters, but it is much easier to use a scrap of transfer tape that is big enough to pick up a single letter at a time. Using transfer tape makes it easier to position the letters where you want them, and you can reuse the same piece over and over till you have all the letters on the blocks.

letter duplo blocks

How to use your Letter Legos

Now that you have a set of letter Legos, grab a base board and a list of words and start building words!

cvc word cards and duplo letter blocks

Use them to build your child’s name – this is a perfect activity for a preschool child who is just learning their name.
Use them to build the alphabet in order – another great idea for a preschooler who is working on letter recognition.
Use them to practice sight words, CVC words, or words from a spelling list – all fun hands-on ways to practice vital reading skills.

We used them with CVC word cards and we built a little stand for the card we were working on too.

hat word card and lego letter word

Free Printable CVC Word Cards

If you have a beginning reader who is working on their CVC words you might like this set of CVC word cards.

There are 18 word cards in this set, each with a CVC word in a clear font and picture to match.

This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. It will fit to print on US ‘letter sized’ paper, just be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options to allow for printer margins.

printed cvc word cards and duplo letter blocks

Download The CVC Word Cards

Click here to download the CVC word cards.

Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.

Make a set of these Duplo or Lego letter blocks and print the free CVC word cards and make learning cvc and sight words fun!

letter duplo blocks and cvc word cards

More Language and Literacy Activities.

If you are looking for more beginner literacy activities try one of these playful learning ideas:

Draw Your Own Postcard - a frree printable postcard template

Practice writing with this design your own postcard free printable.

Easy Letter Collage - download an print our free letter pages and try this simple learning activity

This easy letter collage activity is a great way to work on letter recognition or a fun way to practice spelling words!

Alphabet Patterns - use our free printable and some loose parts for this hands on letter learning activity

Use these alphabet pattern mats to work on letter recognition and letter formation.

Post Office Play - use out free printables to set up your own post office complete with stamps and personal letter boxes!

Have fun writing letters with this free printable post office dramatic play set.

Free Printable Kids Letter Writing Set

Practice writing and send some snail mail with this kids letter writing set.

ALphabet find and colour activity - free printable

Work on letter recognition while you hunt for the letters in this alphabet find and colour printable.

Get play & learning ideas,
plus lots of free printables!

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    4 Comments

    1. Thank you so much for sharing your printable for free! I’m excited for my kids to use the CVC cards with some alphabet stamps they received for Christmas!