Teaching Blending Phonemes when Learning to Read

A love of books and language helps a child to become a reader. As children learn how to rhyme and clap syllables in words, they can also be learning how to blend words together and segment words into their sounds. Blending sounds to make words is a necessary first step. Before children are able to use phonics to read words, they need to blend sounds. Schools put so much emphasis on phonics and many forgot about the phonemic awareness needs of blending sounds without letters. If your child is just learning to read or struggling to read simple words, he or she may need additional time to play with the sounds in words.

If your child is just beginning their reading journey, there are actually phonemic awareness skills that are helpful to develop before working on blending phonemes. To learn more about teaching these skills, please read our post on teaching rhyming. If you are looking for going beyond blending phonemes, the next step in phonemic awareness activities is to focus on segmenting. Segmenting is the beginning of learning how to write words at young ages.

Progression for Teaching Blending Skills

Blending is such a large chunk of phonemic awareness. Not only does it lend itself to other phonemic awareness skills such as addition and manipulation of sounds, but it is the basis of phonics and most beginning reading programs. Without blending skills, most children struggle to learn how to read since they will need to memorize every word they encounter. Yes, some words we need to memorize because these words do not follow the regular patterns of English. However, this is a small subsection of words. About 97% of words are decodable or able to read using phonics.

What does this mean for blending. Once your child masters oral blending, they can begin to focus on phonics skills. Combining the letters with blending opens up the reading world for your child. Once your child masters the most common sounds for English letters and combinations of letters (vowel teams, blends, digraphs), they will be able to read 97% of words in the English language. It is important to note that this is not 97% of words in early readers though, as many common every day words do not follow regular English patterns. Many early readers use multiple sight words.

Start with Compound Words

We start by blending the two words in a compound word together. Use words that are in your child’s vocabulary at first. After that, once he or she begins to understand how to blend compound words, this is a great way to build their vocabulary with new words. Also, try words that are only two syllables in the beginning. We started with simple words. For example, sandbox, upstairs, indoor, playground, airplane, birthday, bathtub, bedroom, cupcake and snowman. To blend say, “I wonder what word air and plane make together. Air” pause “plane” and see if you little one can guess airplane.

Compound words tend to be easier than syllables to start and definitely easier than sounds. Why? Because each part of the word is a recognizable word on its own. Hopefully your child will know the two different words and begin to blend them together to make the compound word, which are usually known to young children.

If this is a struggle for your little one, that’s okay. Learning to blend does take time. Try shortening the pause between the two words. You can also provide a few examples and see if your reader picks up on the activity. If nothing else works, print out pictures of the words above. Provide your child two pictures and see if they can point to the correct picture for the blended compound word. As your child grows their skills, increase the number of pictures you show.

Blending Syllables

Once your child is pretty confident at blending the compound word, be sure to try three syllable or more words like: peanutbutter, butterfly, checkerboard, applesauce, everywhere, grandfather, and cheeseburger. If three syllable words are a little tricky, try blending two syllable words. For example, try words like table, mountain, walking, kitchen. Then move on to multisyllabic words, which are not compound words. These words include fantastic, terrible, trampoline, television, battery. Sometimes children get confused between word and syllable. They want to divide compound words into the two words and not the syllables.

Using pictures when learning to blend syllables can be extremely important. At first, your children might not recognize the syllables as parts of words. By including pictures, you can help your child to see that syllables make up actual words. When you blend the syllables together, you can make a real word. For this provide your child a few pictures. Say the syllables for one of the pictures and see if your child can point to the correct picture or even say the word.

Blending Beginning Sounds

Once compound word blending takes off, it’s time to blend some initial sounds with the rest of the word. We started with names, common objects, and foods since these are words that my children knew well. If you child loves trains or animals, use those words too. To blend say, “What word is /m/” pause “/icrowave/.” Then see if your little one can guess the word. This is a skill that takes a little practice for little ones, especially when the first vowel changes.

Blending Onset and Rime Activities

If your little one struggles with this skill, try practicing the different initial sounds for letters. Begin by using the 5 short and 5 long vowel sounds. So ma (as in mad), ma (as in may), me (as in met), me (as in me), mi (as in mitt), mi (as in might), mo (as in mom), mo (as in more), mu (as in mud), mu (as in mute). As they get confident with longer words, try some 3 and 4 letter words like: /b/ /at/, /p/ /et/, /s/ /ip/, /p/ /op/, /c/ /up/. Teachers assess this skill usually at the three and four letter words, so always good to practice here too.

If these shorter words still prove difficult, try providing your child the first two sounds together and just add the ending. Sometimes the initial consonant causes the most difficulty. For example, say /ma/ /t/ and see if your child can respond with the word mat. This has two distinct advantages for young children. First, you can stretch out the vowel sounds more easily then most consonant sounds. Second, they hear the more at the beginning of the word making it easier to recall words that begin this way.

Using Pictures and Objects

Another great way to practice blending onsets and rimes is to use pictures or actual items. Gather a collection of pictures and items from around your house. Then you say the beginning sound (onset) paired with the rest of the word (rime). See if your child can point to the correct picture or object for the word. This is a great scaffold, especially when your child is new to this skill.

Adding Motions or Movements

Blending onset and rime activities that involve motion and movement can be especially fun for young learners. To easily add motion to blending activities, try onset and rime action words. Brainstorm a list of verbs or actions your child can do. Then say the onset and rime of each action. See if your little one can do the correct action. For example, say /j/ /ump/ and see if your reader jumps. Some great action words include jump, sit, hop, turn, march, walk, write, open, kick, and run.

How to Teach Blending Sounds

Next, we move onto blending some two sound words that begin with a consonant letter. These words include – go, may, by, pie, neigh, sigh, lay, key, zoo, and paw. Why do we begin with consonants at the beginning of the words? Because these words are more known to child and they include many nouns and verbs. Nouns and verbs lend themselves to including pictures or asking your child to make the movement which can be powerful when first learning.

Then try the two sound words that begin with a vowel. These words include many common high frequency words that your child will learn to read like am, at, it, in, on, up, an, is (use the z sound for s), if, or, and us. These words can be a little more difficult because they are not nouns or action verbs. Instead they are often preposition words or being verbs, which can be more difficult to pair with pictures and motions. Sound boxes can help if your child would benefit from a visual. We use these in the classroom often.

Once your child is capable of blending many two sound words, have your child try blending 3 sound words together. These include words like cub, dad, met, sat, tip, pod, cake, seat, light, and nope. To blend say, “What words is /c/” pause “/u/” pause “/b/” and see if your child can guess cub. Usually if children are able to blend many different two sound words, they quickly pick up the three sound words. If your child is struggling, go back to blending two sound words and initial sounds with the rest of the word.

Activities for Blending Phonemes

A powerful activity to play with blending phonemes is a tapping out the sounds. For this activity, you child will tap a part of their body for each sound or tap a finger for each sound in the word. If a word has three sounds, they may tap their head, shoulders, and knees. For words with four sounds, try tapping head, shoulders, knees and toes. Pairing movement with the sounds can help your child to learn how to blend the sounds together.

Another activity for blending phonemes is a sentence completion activity. For this, think of a word for your child to blend. Then provide your child a sentence where the word comes at the end, but instead of saying the word, give the sounds. For example, We love to /r/ /u/ /n/. See if your child can provide the word run. If he is struggling, ask, what do we love to do?

Changing up the Blending Sentence Completion Activity

To make this activity a little easier, try it out with a rhyme. For example, I see a cat. He has a /h/ /a/ /t/. Having a rhyming reference can help your young reader to blend the sounds of the second word a little more easily.

To add a challenge, try a few riddles where the answer is said in sounds for your child. I am thinking of a yummy treat and is a /c/ /a/ /k/. These can help guide your child by limiting the words they need to choose from to form the correct answer.

You could also add blending into your child’s favorite songs and fingerplays. See, these really are so important for future success. You can sing a song with your child and pause to turn one of the words into sounds. Great sounds for this activity are “Old MacDonald’s Farm,” “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” and “Down by the Bay.” Some great fingerplays include “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,” “Wheels on the Bus,” and “One, Two Buckle my Shoe.” For this activity, just turn one of the words that changes in each verse into sounds. For example, Old MacDonald has a /c/ /ow/.

To Challenge Your Little One

As a challenge, begin to add in blends, digraphs, and short compound words for your child to blend together. Blends include beginning blends like bl, cl, sl, st, str, thr, tr, sk, sc and ending blends like st, sk, sp, nd, mp, ft. Digraphs are ch, sh, th, and wh. To start, keep the blend together when introducing them to your child. Try saying, “What words is /bl/” pause “/a/” pause “/ck/” and see if your child can say black.

As your child grows, you can split the blend into two different sounds like /g/ /r/ /a/ /s/ /p/ and see if your child can figure out grasp. Digraphs are never split into two different sounds because they are two letter that make just one sound. Once your child can verbally blend different sounds into words, then they are ready to begin using letters to blend the letter sounds into words. Blending sounds is an important part of phonics.

Don’t miss the next post in the learning to read series, Segmenting. Segmenting takes an in-depth look into how to help your child develop this phonemic awareness skill. If you enjoyed this post, drop of us comment below. We’d love to hear about your favorite blending activities. For more parenting tips, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter below.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.