We’ve been playing a game in our co-op that Pea loves so much she asks to play it by herself as well. She’s a tactile learner, and this game gives her an easy way to visually and physically learn about blending phonemes with her hands. For more information about blending phonemes, you can read our longer article on phonemic awareness.
Here’s the basic idea for blending initial sounds:
- Hold up your right hand and make the initial sound of the word. For example, if the word you are going to blend is “sat”, you’ll make the ‘s’ sound with your right hand.
- Next, hold up your left hand and make the sounds for the remainder of the word, ‘-at’ in our example.
- Finally, bring your two hands together and as you slowly say the whole word, making sure your child gets to hear the initial sound and how it is combined with the remaining sounds.
Once your child gets the idea, you can do the first two steps and let your child do the final step on their own, bringing the sounds together with their own hands to make the word. One key point is to make sure you are using your right hand for the beginning sounds and your left hand for the ending sounds. This drives home the idea that words are formed left to right. Remember, your child is seeing the mirror image of what you see.
You can use this same concept in reverse to isolate final sounds in words too! Just isolate the final sound with your left hand an use your right hand for all of the initial sounds.