Updated: Jan 29
Phonics is the prime approach for teaching children to read. Once your child knows some sounds they will begin to blend. This means your child will say the individual sounds and then push them together to read the word.
During Phase One, which is taught in nursery, children do a lot of work on hearing the sounds and blending them together and in Phase Two, which is taught in Reception, we begin to look at the sounds written as letters and blend to read words.
Some children find blending tricky and the blending slide is a great way to show it visually. I got the blending slide idea from a video I saw on Youtube and used it with children in my class and found that it really helped. It has a slightly different approach to blending, where you build the word up by blending two sounds first then adding a third sound rather than blending three sounds all at once. This is a great way to support your child if they are finding blending tricky.
To do the activity you a picture of a slide - you can either print the one below or draw one. You will also need magnetic letters or letters written on pieces of paper. I used the first few sounds from
Phase 2 (s, a, t, p, i, n).
Download your copy of the blending slide below:
You can share this video with your child or use the story below.
The Blending Slide Story:
The letters went to the playground and saw a slide. ‘A’ was the bravest letter and she said “me first, me first!”
As she climbed she made her sound “a, a, a, a”. When she got to the top she realised how high the slide was so she said “please can someone catch me?”
T said “I’ll catch you.”
So A slid down the slide and said “aaaaaa” and when she got to the bottom T caught her and said "t" and the word they created was ‘at’.
Repeat the activity creating VC words (vowel-consonant) e.g. in, it.
Then extend the activity by starting with a consonant to create a CVC word (consonant-vowel-consonant).
S wanted to go with A. S said her sound and A made her sound. Then they said their sound together ssssaaaa. They slid down and T caught them "ssssssssaaaaaat – sat".
Other words you could make: sat, sit, sip, sap, tap, tip.
You can also make words that are not real. Talk to your child about whether they have made a real word or a nonsense word.
Magnetic letters are included in the Phonics Box.