Blending is a foundational skill in learning to read. In this blog post, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about teaching blending, including:

What is blending in phonics?
Why is blending important for early readers?
What are the best strategies for teaching blending?
What are some fun and engaging blending activities?
How can I help struggling readers with blending?

Read on to learn more!

What is Blending in Phonics?

Blending is the process of combining individual sounds to form a word. For example, the word ‘cat’ consists of three sounds: /c/ /a/ /t/. When children can identify these sounds (phonemes) and recognise the letters that represent them (graphemes), they can successfully read words like ‘cat’.

Blending is a fundamental early reading skill that helps children decode unfamiliar words, develop reading fluency and improve comprehension, paving the way for more advanced reading skills.

Best Strategies for Teaching Blending

Learning to blend is a progressive skill that begins in early childhood. Initially, children learn to identify separate words in a sentence, then break words into syllables. This can be practised through clapping or stomping along to familiar songs and rhymes - for example, marking each word in Mary Had a Little Lamb or each syllable in Twin-kle Twin-kle Lit-tle Star.

Exploring rhyming words (pair, share) and alliteration (silly snake) further supports early blending skills, helping children tune into sounds within words.

By the first year of school, children begin focusing on blending and segmenting individual phonemes. Here are some effective strategies for teaching blending at this stage:

Begin with oral blending. Say a word broken into individual sounds and have children blend them together. For example, say “/s/ /u/ /n/” and have them respond with “sun.”
Introduce Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs). Following a phonics scope & sequence to ensure systematic learning, introduce letters alongside their sounds (GPCs). Some programs use actions or mnemonics to help children remember each GPC, while others simply encourage repeated practice with flashcards and interactive activities.
Practice blending with continuous sounds. Once children have learned enough GPCs to form VC (vowel-consonant) and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, they can begin blending. Start with words that begin with continuous sounds - sounds that can be held indefinitely, such as /ssssss/ or /nnnnnn/ - as they are easier to blend smoothly, like in words such as ‘sit’ and ‘nap’. Encourage students to ‘keep their voices on’ (saying the sounds without a gap between them) to facilitate smoother blending.
Introduce words beginning with stop sounds. After mastering continuous sounds, children can blend words beginning with stop sounds, such as /p/ or /t/. When teaching these, avoid adding a ‘schwa’ (e.g. saying 'puh' instead of /p/). Instead, model them as short puffs of air. Teaching sounds without the schwa makes it easier for students to successfully blend sounds into words.
Teach 'tricky words'. Some high-frequency words, like 'the', 'of' and 'was' don’t follow regular spelling patterns. Teach these explicitly by identifying the tricky part - for example, the ‘e’ in 'the' sounds like /u/, and the ‘f’ in ‘of’ makes a /v/ sound. Breaking these words up and drawing attention to their tricky parts is more effective than learning these words by sight.
Onset & rime / word families. Once children are blending decodable words, help them recognise patterns in words with the same ending sounds. For example, in ‘mat’, /m/ is the onset and /at/ is the rime. Recognising word families like ‘cat’, ‘sat’ and ‘pat’ can help improve blending fluency.
Introduce common digraphs, CVCC and CCVC words. After mastering the most common letter sounds, introduce digraphs (two letters that make one sound, like ‘sh’ or ‘ch’), as well as CVCC (‘bend’, ‘lamp’) and CCVC (‘stop’, ‘plan’) words to expand blending skills.
Practice, practice, practice! Blending improves with consistent, structured practice. In the next section, we’ll explore some fun activities and games to help children practice and master the skill of blending!

Fun and Engaging Blending Activities for Kids

Word & Picture Match: Students blend and read word cards, then match them to the correct picture. Make it more engaging - and boost fine motor skills - by using a magnetic fishing game. Students turn over a card, blend the sounds to read the word, then ‘catch’ the matching picture with a magnetic rod. Learn how to make your own here.

Blending Bingo: Create bingo boards with decodable words. Draw a word from a hat and segment the sounds aloud (e.g. “/h/ /a/ /t/… what’s the word?”). Students blend the sounds to say the word. If it’s on their board, they cover it with a counter. First to get five in a row wins!

Teaching Blending - Guess the Mystery Word

Mystery Word Challenge: Write a decodable word on a whiteboard and cover it with paper. Slowly reveal one sound at a time, encouraging children to blend the sounds as they go. To add excitement, challenge them to guess the word before it’s fully revealed! For individual or small-group practice, use a folded card ‘envelope’ to hide and reveal word cards.

Sing & Dance Along to Our Blending Video: Pevan & Sarah’s Blending video series makes phonics practice fun! Each episode includes a letter-sound warm up, blending practice with decodable words and a catchy chorus reinforcing the four steps for reading success.

🎵 Episode 1 covers s, t, a, p, n & i and is free to watch! New episodes in the series can be accessed with a Cub Club subscription and are released every two weeks on Wednesdays.

Download this now with a 7 day free trial of Cub Club!

Blending Board & Decodable Word Cards: Use our 440+ levelled word cards alongside the Blending Board to build blending skills. Each card features sound buttons for each GPC and are colour-coded to correspond with each episode of Blending, making differentiation easy. The Blending Mat includes visual reminders of the four blending steps from the video, plus an arrow and a finger guide to support tracking and blending.

How to Help Struggling Readers with Blending

Despite your best efforts, some children will find blending trickier to master. This can be due to low phonemic awareness, poor auditory memory, speech or processing delays, difficulty with sound-symbol correspondence or simply a lack of practice.

Here are some tips for supporting struggling readers:

Go back to basics with oral blending games. Instead of breaking words into separate sounds, use onset-rime (e.g. ‘m-at’). Reinforce syllables, alliteration and rhyming through interactive games, songs and rhymes.

📺 Watch our Syllables and Rhyme Time video series with a 7 day free trial of Cub Club!

Review common GPCs with multi-sensory activities. Have students trace letters in sand while saying the sound, shape letters with play-dough or create letter crafts (e.g. an ‘S’ shaped like a snake).

🎵 Use our Alphabet Jam & Alphabet Song videos to reinforce letters and sounds. Watch Alphabet Jam - Letter A for free above!

Model blending regularly using visuals and gestures such as Heggerty’s Blending Hand Motions. Incorporate blending into everyday routines and requests (e.g. “Can you come and sit on the /m/ /a/ /t/?” and have students blend the word).
Use visual supports. Display our blending desk strips and wall displays to reinforce the blending process.

⭐️ Download these resources with a Cub Club subscription.

Encourage regular practice. If you’re a teacher, share Blending - Episode 1 with families - it’s free and helps parents support reading at home!

Free & Printable Blending Resources for Teachers & Parents

We’ve already highlighted how our free video, Blending - Episode 1, can support interactive phonics lessons and at-home learning.

You can also download our comprehensive Blending Activity Booklet - Level 1. With 14 pages of tracing, matching, drawing and reading activities, it supports students at every stage of their learning and is available in all Australian state fonts and print - perfect for classroom use or extra practice at home.

This booklet is free, but you can access all of the Blending Printable Activities mentioned in this blog in Cub Club with a 7-day free trial.

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We hope you find these tips and resources helpful in your classroom or at home! We’d love to hear your feedback - what games and activities do you use to teach blending? What phonics resources would you like to see in Cub Club next? Get in touch via our Contact page!