Here’s an activity that you can do to support blending sounds and letters together. This activity is an exciting way of encouraging children to learn how to blends sounds together.
What is blending?
Blending is the ability to join sounds together to read a word.
It is important to immerse children into blending from a very young age we do this through our babbling babies, talking toddlers, ICAN and letters and sounds pack.
A fun physical way for children to blend early words and to practice letter-sound is to:
- Layout 3 hoops or alternatively draw 3 circles.
- Place a letter in each, or chalk one, that will sound out a word.
- Ask your child to jump through each hoop, blending the word as they go, for example, b-a-t.
Start with simple words, such as “bat“, “cat“, “dog“, “fox” and “hat“. Once your child is more confident, you can make the activity more challenging by adding in different sounds, such as “sh”, f-i-s-h, “ch” c-h-i-p.