Consonant Blends
Teaching kids about blends helps them to develop the skill of segmentation, which is being able to split words into their individual speech sounds. This skill is very important for spelling.
When I teach blends, I say each word slowly to help kids hear the individual sounds. So when saying a word such as tree I slow it right down to “t – r – ee”. From there we’d practice saying the “t” and “r” a bit faster so it forms a “tr” sound.
I used to get confused about the difference between a blend and a digraph until I got an aha moment! Basically if you try to say the sounds in a digraph individually, the word doesn’t sound right. For example, saying the individual sounds of ship as “s – h – i– p” doesn’t sound like ship because “sh” is a digraph and makes only one sound – “sh”. Blends on the other hand have two sounds blended together, so if you say a blend slowly you can still hear the individual letter sounds.
Blends Clip Cards
These free blends clip cards work really well as a literacy center activity.To prepare
- Print the blends clip cards on cardstock or laminate for added durability.
- Cut along the dashed lines.
- Fill a small basket with pegs.
- Add a sticker on the back of each card behind the answer if you’d like the kids to be able to self-correct their answers.
To Play
- Place the basket of pegs next to the blends clip cards
- Pick up a card, say the word, sound it out and clip the beginning blend.
For example, “frog, f – r – o – g, frog begins with fr”. - Repeat until all the cards have been clipped and then check the answers.
1st & 2nd Grade Language Arts Activities
- 100 Books for 1st Graders to Read THEMSELVES (by book level)
- Alphabet-O - Alphabetizing
- Arctic Animals Sight Words Game
- Book Report
- Building Sentences Cut & Paste Worksheets
- Candyland Sight Word Game
- Creative Writing Prompts (various)
- Dinosaur Bones Punctuation Game
- Hershey Kiss Word Families
- Marshmallow Incident’s Noun – Verb Sort
- My Spelling Dictionary
- Pumpkin Word Family Sliders
- Punctuation Car File Folder Game
- S’more Sentence Game
- Word Endings Ice Cream Shop
Download Blends Clip Cards
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Rosemary is an Australian Early Childhood Teacher and founder of Fairy Poppins Teaching Resources. She has a passion for play-based learning and creating printables for teachers and students that make learning fun. You can find her on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
