8 Sneaky-Fun Activities for Blending and Segmenting Sounds

Blending and segmenting sounds are truly the meat and potatoes of phonemic awareness work for emerging readers. The stronger these oral skills are, the better situated children are to use letter sounds to make actual words. This is where reading becomes exciting!

If your student is having a hard time blending sounds together, or separating them apart, take courage-there are lots of things you can do to support your child at home. Phonemic awareness can be taught, practiced, and strengthened. With some gentle, playful activities, you can give your child the best possible chance at developing their literacy skills.

How to Help Your Kid At Home

If your kiddo is struggling to work with the individual sounds in words, it can help to do a couple of things. 

First, we want to relieve some of the pressure by taking the difficulty level down. This means that if your student is struggling to blend or segment words like "stiff" or "mask", drop back to words like "sit" and "mat". These have fewer sounds.

If your child is struggling to blend "cat" and "top", drop back to "at" and "in", and other words with just 2 sounds. Try to make it feel easy, asap.

When your kiddo can blend and segment sounds in that easy level, without errors, then add one additional sound to your words.

Next, there are lots of multisensory activities (below) to help kids understand and practice blending and segmenting sounds.  All of these can be used for words with 2-6 sounds. Adjust the number of items you need to match the number of sounds your student is working on blending/segmenting:

Activities for Blending Sounds (and Segmenting them, too!)

1. Lego bricks

Materials:   different color Lego bricks or Duplo blocks (1 brick per sound)

Instructions:   Connect blocks to represent blending sounds together, and separate them to represent segmenting. I recommend using different color blocks within the same word.

2. Magnatiles

Materials: magnetic connecting blocks or tiles

Instructions:   Each tile can represent 1 sound. Snap together tiles in a row to show blending, and separate them to show segmenting.

3. Sound Slide 

Materials: Sound slide, several small toys.

Instructions: Draw a playground slide on a paper or whiteboard, or print the one in my free Blending Sounds Starter Kit.  Grab some small toys and place one on the top of the slide, and one on the bottom. Assign a sound to the top toy (eg. /a/) and another sound to the bottom toy (eg. /t/).

The top toy says its sound all the way down the slide, but then crashes into the bottom toy!  Ouch! The bottom toy says his sound as he gets crashed.  If your slide has pretend peanut butter on it, you might slide slowly. If your slide has lightening grease on it, you'll probably slide very quickly without stopping. If there are more friends on the slide, you can blend 3+ sounds by crashing them one at a time.

4. Race Car/Train

Materials:   toy car or train, the floor or a track to drive on, marked with painters tape/blocks

Instructions:   The race car (or train) has to zoom to the finish line-there's no time for stopping! Set up checkpoints along the track. Each checkpoint = 1 sound.  As your car passes each checkpoint, say that sound.  Don't slow down, or the other cars will win!

5. Paint

Materials:    piece of paper, pencil, 3 different colors of spreadable paint (eg. acrylic, craft, or finger paint), optional brush

Instructions:  set up a piece of sturdy paper and several colors of acrylic or finger paint. Draw an arching curve, like the shape of a rainbow, lightly with a pencil. Place 3 different color dollops of paint along the rainbow shape, preferably the far left side, the middle, and close to the far right side. These should be three different colors. 

Drag your finger or brush from left to right along the rainbow, making sure that the paint from one color bleeds right into the next color as you go. Say each separate sound as you touch a different color. Go back and repeat the brush stroke faster to blend the sounds faster!

       6. Shoulder Slide (this works well when using the letters of the alphabet)

Materials: post it notes and marker, your arm

Instructions: write the letters that represent the sounds in your target word on sticky notes. For example, if you want your child to blend "chop", you would use 3 sticky notes to write CH, O, P. Place the first sticky note (eg. CH) on your left shoulder, the middle on the inside of your elbow, and the last sound sticky note on your wrist. 

One by one, touch and say the sounds on your shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Then, hold out your arm at an angle like it's a slide. Now slide your hand from your shoulder to your wrist, saying those sounds without a pause between. You might have to start the middle sound "O" higher up on your arm if the first sound is a very quick sound. Now make the slide even steeper, and slide down again even faster! 

Next Level Blending and Segmenting Activities

Here's a few fun things to try when your kiddo starts to get the hang of it:

7. Mommy Robot

In this game, the student is primarily segmenting sounds.

Mommy Robot has to clean up her room! Your student has to tell Robot Mommy which items to pick up by saying the words like a robot, one sound at a time, so she will understand you. 

Mommy Robot sees a sock on the floor and says, "This-is-a-s-o-ck", and puts the sock in the laundry. The child gets to dictate which items to pick up by saying the words in a robot voice, one sound at a time.  The items on the floor may have more than 3 sounds-that's totally fine!)

       Baby Robot 

In this game, the student is primarily blending sounds.

Baby Robot has to pick up his room! Mommy will say which item to pick up like a robot-one sound at a time-and Baby Robot has to find that item and pick it up! (or put it in a laundry basket).  For example, Mommy might say "h-a-t" and Baby Robot has to get the hat and put it in the basket.

8. Robot Shopping

Time to go shopping with the Robot! (A parent or the child can be the robot). The Robot will tell you what is on the list, and you have to put it in the shopping basket. Remember, robots can only say words one sound at a time. Can you understand what the Robot is telling you? Walk around the house (shopping center) and try to get all the things the Robot tells you to get.

Should You Use Letters? (Yep)

If your kiddo really knows some of his or her letter sounds, then add in those letters to your blending activities! Even if your child only has a couple of letters learned, you can, and should, use them. 

If your kiddo doesn't know their letter sounds yet, or is overwhelmed by using letters, that's OK!  You can use the manipulatives on their own. As soon as your student has some letter sounds that are really solid, then bring those letters back in.  First make a word with manipulatives only, and then make it again using the letters. 

Letter tiles, magnet letters, letter cards, or even sticky notes with letters written on them are all good options. I like to use a dry erase marker on my Magnatiles.

Example:

Let's say that your student has learned the letters S, A, T, P, I, N. They have those letter sounds down, and can even form those letters correctly! 

Here are some words you can build for your child to practice blending, starting with the easiest: 

at, it, in, sit, sip, sin, sat, sap, nap, nip, tap, tin, pat, pit, pin

(I avoid using words with "am" and "an" at the very beginning, and bring those words in as kids get more comfortable.)

All of these words are great choices for blending practice! You can do all of your blending games with letters straight away, or you can first do a game without letters, and then repeat those same words with letters.

Tips For Parents:

• Start with words that have 2 sounds in them.
• Start with words that have a continuous initial sound (you can hold the first sound for a long time)
• After your child blends sounds to make a word, try having them separate the sounds right away. This helps bridge the connection between blending and segmenting.
• Be cool. Try not to accidentally take full charge of your child's play and turn real playtime into pseudo school.  Kids can sniff that out. As long as it feels like a game, you're good. Of course, you may have to put on a bit of a teacher hat with your kid if they are particularly resistant, but only work on 3 or so words, then change activities. 

Summary

These activities are designed to help bridge the gap from learning letter sounds to learning to read and spell actual words. If this specific skill is really hard for your kiddo, don't be discouraged!  Phonemic awareness can be built with clear examples and practice. You can do all of this in the comfort of your own home, and in the context of play.

If you'd like a printable set of activities, along with pictures of how to set them up and a comprehensive word list, then grab my free Blending Sounds Starter Kit.  You'll get step by step instructions and printables to practice blending and segmenting, all from home.