Match and Spell Next Steps

What is it

Match and Spell Next Steps is the perfect progression from Orchard Toys’ bestselling, award-winning Match and Spell.

The game is played by building a variety of familiar and more advanced words, from ‘Moth’ to ‘Balloon’, with the help of colourful illustrations to identify words.

Parents can use the sound and blend cards to encourage children to make the individual sounds as well as saying the entire word aloud. There are 18 words included in the game.

Once children become more confident, they can turn over the boards to use the blank side for a more challenging game. The game is finished once all the word boards have been completed.

What our experts think

Match and Spell Next Steps is a nice simple matching game to help children practise letter sounds and blending. It was great seeing the children recognise the letters and sound them out, decoding the word they were trying to spell so they knew which card to look for. Parents can also encourage learning by showing children the letters and telling them the sounds to find.

We like the way the letters have dots, and the digraphs are underlined, which is familiar to many children. It’s also good that there is a blank side of the card so children can push their skills further. Learning letter sounds supports children’s literacy skills as it helps them to sound out words while reading, or code words in order to spell them.