Hands-On Blending Word Activities for K-1

Published: January 9, 2025
No Comments

After students have worked hard to learn letter-sound relationships, it’s time to put it all together (literally) with blending! Learning how to blend individual sounds together to read words is an exciting milestone for budding readers. With plenty of practice, students will build a strong foundation that will make them more fluent and confident readers. In this post, I’m going to share some hands-on blending word activities that can add some engaging practice to your literacy lesson plans.

The Benefits of Hands-On Word Blending Activities

When it comes to teaching students how to blend sounds, it’s helpful to use a variety of activity types. This includes hand-on activities! Using hands-on activities for blending words can engage students in deeper learning and provide a kinesthetic option for the various learners in your classroom.

“Research shows that teachers who spend larger than average amounts of time on blending – modeling blending and providing loads of practice blending words in isolation and in context – achieve greater student gains.” (Haddock, Roseshine, & Stevens)

This means that it’s vital for students to get a lot of opportunities to practice blending. Hands-on activities can keep that repetition more engaging! When students are engaged, the concepts they’re practicing are more likely to stick.

The Two Types of Blending

Before I share some hands-on blending practice with you, I wanted to mention the two types of blending – final blending and successive blending. Both types of blending practice can be useful for different reasons. The activity cards I will be sharing in this post can be used to practice both types of blending.

1. Final Blending

When you are teaching students to blend sounds using final blending, they should first say the sound for each letter and then say (blend) the sounds together to say the word. As an example using the word “bed”: Students would say /b/ /e/ /d/ and then blend the sounds to say /bed/. (This is also known as cumulative blending.)

According to Wiley Blevins, if you have a struggling reader, final blending is best to use during your intervention time with that student. By working through the word sound by sound, you can determine if there is a specific sound spelling that is particularly difficult for that student. Identifying these specific needs can help you provide more targeted phonics instruction during intervention time.

2. Successive Blending

In successive blending, you teach students to run a finger under the word and blend the sounds together as they go. (This is also known as continuous blending.) For this form of blending, students do not pause between sounds. Instead, students they can start by blending the word at a slow pace, then repeat it at a normal speed to say the complete word. Successive blending will be what you use mostly during your phonics instruction.

Blending Word Activities for Hands-On Practice

Blending instruction and practice doesn’t need to be difficult. In fact, my Touch, Read, and Write activity cards are very simple and straightforward. However, they are very effective and engaging for students. They would make a great addition to your literacy centers and intervention groups.

These word blending cards are easy to prep! Just laminate and assemble them into groups based on the phonics pattern your students need to practice. Binder rings are great for these task card bundles! Then students will just need a set of cards and dry erase markers for the activity. It’s a super low-prep phonics center or intervention activity!

Step One: Touch

Each task card has a picture for students to identify, along with Elkonin boxes for each sound in the word that matches the picture. Some of the phoneme boxes are already filled in with the corresponding letters, but there is a phoneme missing that students need to identify.

They will start by touching the sounds as they say the word to help them identify which phoneme is missing. There are dots under each box as a visual cue for students as they say the sounds in the word.

Step Two: Read

Students can then read the word by saying the sounds in the boxes, listening for the sound that’s missing. The arrow under the boxes and dots is a great visual reminder for students who are using successive blending to read the word.

Step Three: Write

After reading the word and identifying the missing phoneme, it’s time for students to think of the letter (or letters) that make the sound! Once they’ve figured it out, they can fill in the blank and then read the word one more time to check their work.

This is a simple activity, but it’s very engaging for young readers! They love to flip through the stack of cards and identify the missing sound on each one. It’s like a fun puzzle for them to solve!

The missing sounds are in initial, medial and ending positions, so students can get a wide variety of practice with phonological awareness.

Printable Word Blending Activities

Would you like to try this phonics activity in your classroom? I’ve put together a set of over 650 word cards that cover CVC words, CVCe words, blends and digraphs with engaging skill practice. These cards also come with “I Can” visual direction cards and exit tickets, which provides structure for independent practice.

This resource also offers differentiated learning paths, which makes it perfect for the diverse student needs in your classroom. Your students will grow more confident with word blending as they practice with these cards.

If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this resource, you can find it in my blog store. Click here to check them out: