Stuck at blending - need creative ideas!

[MomOfABunch]

We're stuck on blending. Single sounds are ok, but not blending more than 1 sound. I've tried and tried and tried! Has anyone else gotten stuck here? What did you do?

[Crimson Wife]

This is the 5 y.o.? I wouldn't sweat it at this point but just keep plugging away. Switch up the materials you're using so he doesn't get bored. Evan-Moor's "Take it to Your Seat Phonics Centers" are fun "hands-on" phonics practice activities.

[nannyaunt]

I don't know if this will work but you could try this - to sound out the word can,  put your right hand on your left shoulder for /c/ move to the elbow for /a/ and down to the wrist for /n/ and then slide it down saying  /c --> a --> n/ for the blending.  Once they get that, then just hold up one finger for /c/, two fingers for /a/, three fingers for /n/. Then blend while doing 1-2-3.

 

Or you could back off for a week or two or three and see if that helps.  I just recently went through big panic attack because the kid didn't know what rhymes were.  I mean message boards, searching the internet, going to the teacher supply store and spending $50 on rhyming folder games... that was on Friday - Sunday, Monday his dad says what's a rhyme he says like cake and snake.  We hadn't done any school since Friday when I freaked out.  That was a couple weeks ago.  Things are still bumping along with ups and downs.

[PagesandFields]

okay... this is coming from most of my past life working with different older kids with learning differences...

 

but one thing that I think started helping my ds a bit was to stomp around the yard with GUSTO sounding out words.  

C... A... T... CAT! 

 

At 5 with mine I stop and start.  I think some aren't ready and I never want to force it on him and make him not like learning.  I don't do phonics the same way two days in a row... and never for more than 5 minutes.  That's helped.  

 

So - one day, OPGTR, another writing out words, another picking out a phonics puzzle, another playing with magnet letters, etc... 

[ColleenInWis]

Well, I haven't taught a child to read in 9 years...  but I loved the way Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons taught blending  It seemed so effortless.  None of my 5 kiddos with whom I used that book had any trouble with blending.  I don't remember all the techniques used, but I do recall that the rhyming activities were especially helpful.  Perhaps you can find a copy in a public library to get the idea.  Or borrow from a friend.    

[desertflower]

We used the train game from phonics pathways. Start with just 2 letters. Generally, a consonant and a vowel (short). Put the consonant in your right hand and the vowel in the left hand. Put them together sounding out the letters. Get faster as the hands approach each other. We did this til they got the hang of it.

 

Hth

[CTVKath]

Hi there. We are stuck at this exact spot with a young 5yo (my oldest so my first time around). We are doing Phonics Pathways (which my daughter loves) and she hit a deer-in-headlights spot when we reached CV blending last week and the train game did not help. She memorized the first 2 pages of blends - sa/se/si/so/su and ma/me/mi/mo/mu - and does not sound them out or blend at all.

 

We stopped Phonics Pathways and I got a copy of the Leapfrog Word Factory DVD for her to watch instead (which she is loving). I also pulled out a used copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (which I never thought I'd use) and we did the first 4 lessons in it. She does not like TYCTR at all but did fine with the first 4 lessons. She is begging to do Phonics Pathways again so I will try it again on Monday and see what happens. 

 

If she can blend, we'll keep going with Phonics Pathways. If she cannot blend, then we'll take another week to watch Leapfrog Word Factory and play the say-it-slow and say-it-fast games from TYCTR. Those seemed to really help.

 

Good luck. I feel your pain - it's stressful - especially never having gone through the process before.

 

Katherine

[Syllieann]

Start by having him stretch the vowel sounds out /aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/ for 5 seconds or so. Do this for all the short vowels. Then tell him you are going to end the sound with another letter. If you have tiles or flash cards you could have him crash them together. My ods loved that. Make sure he doesn't let any "quiet" between them. So then you would do aaaaaaaaaaaaat. Progress through this with all the short v/c combos.

 

When he gets that down begin adding consonants before the vowel. Use the sounds that can be stretched first. Namely f, l, m, n, r, s, v. Have him stretch the consonant sound out as he did the vowels before so he might say ssssssssssssssssss. Then have him add the vowel so you would get ssssssssssaaaaaaaaaaa. Then tack the final consonant on so it would be sssssssssaaaaaaaaat. Remind him not to let any quiet sneak between them.

 

While you are working on these things, continue to model blending in your read alouds or daily life. Sound the letters out separately and then blend them together. You can slowly continue on with learning phonograms and rules if you wish. After he sounds it out, just blend it together for him and have him repeat it.

[Chris in VA]

Take a matchbox car and a piece of tape. Write a consonant like M or S, one that is sustained, on the tape and put it on the roof of the car.

Take another car and do the same, with a vowel.

 

Now, child "drives" first car, making sound, and crashes into second car--at the moment of the crash, says the second sound. :D

 

Or you can just work on deconstructing 3 letter words first--so take small objects and put wooden/plastic/paper letters next to them to make the sounds he hears. In Montessori, spelling comes before reading.

 

Like this.

[MomOfABunch]

Thanks for all the ideas! I hope one of them works :/

[Laura W.]

A really great resource is Phonemic Awareness in Young Children.  We used this with my ds.  This book is full of a variety of different exercises/games to do with 5-7 year olds, and has sample schedules for both K and 1st grades.  

 

We also played games in identifying medial (short-vowel) sounds in CVC  words, as well as games identifying first and last sounds.

 

You might also try changing the first letter of a word to make a rhyming word (example - tell them to change the "c" in cat to "h".  Use letter sounds, not their names, when doing this).

 

For a lot of children there seems to be a bit of a hump in moving from single sounds to blending.  My oldest dd, for example, took 6 months to get there (knew all her letter sounds by 5 1/2 but didn't blend until her 6th birthday).  However, I will encourage you that if your child continues to be unable to blend after 9-12 months of work, start looking for an underlying cause.  My ds, who I mentioned above, is dyslexic, and it has been such a relief to find the curricula and tools to help him in his area of weakness.

 

Blessings,

 

Laura

[Meadowlark]

My 5 yr. old was stuck here too, which was so foreign to me after very easily teaching my other guy to read at 5. We use AAR, and I think we did lesson 1 three different times because I shelved it 3 times. He just wasn't ready. It really is okay to wait. Sometimes they just need a little more time.

 

In the meantime, I just worked with him on a whiteboard or iPad app and made it easy, fun and low stress. One day I got out AAR again and guess what? He could blend! Now he's reading quite nicely.

[Hunter]

Is he stuck on the concept of blending, or is he stuck trying to juggle too many letters at one time.

 

Could he blend words made up of just the same 4 or 5 letters?

[AimeeM]

We did get stuck there. DS5 learned his letters and sounds pretty early, but he had known them a good year before he could blend them. 

 

First suggestion: oral exercises. This was great fun for Nico, and he didn't even know we were "working", because I just did it randomly. I would speak in single sounds, breaking down whole words, into their individual sounds, and he would have to put them together, in his head or orally, to "figure out the word". I would start out by breaking it down by syllable, for him to join, and eventually I would break it into individual sounds. For example: "puh-lease, g-et, me, the, bl-oo (blue), gl-ass".

 

Second suggestion: the train game. I got this from Phonics Pathways. It is the only thing we enjoyed in the book, lol. Train pieces with single letters on them. Start with a consonant on one, and a short vowel sound on another. Nico would hold the consonant sound, and say it, while I would "chug" the short vowel sound to his consonant, piggy backing (he would say "c", I would say "a"), until they met, at which time he would blend the two together. Eventually I would put a VC on one single piece, to meet his initial consonant sound, so that he was blending common CVC words.

 

Third suggestion: wait a bit. This was the best advice I received on these boards when I was worrying about it. I didn't want to hear it, lol. Honestly, though, when I finally put it away for a bit, and just played with some oral exercises (like in my first suggestion), after a couple months I picked it back up again and voila! 

[MomOfABunch]

Thanks for all your ideas. I think I got my answer on the special needs board. It's my DD who is 12 who is having this issue. 5 year old is doing ok