We're going on a blend hunt...

Here we are 'hunting' for consonant blends. A blend is when two consonants (any letter except a, e, i, o, u) are next to one another and their sounds are blended together. It is important to teach young readers this skill. It helps them "read through the word" which means it helps them look at more then just the first letter. Oftentimes children will look as the first letter and make a guess however, it is important to show them that sometimes we need to look at the first few letters.
Examples:
     -frost (fr and st)
     -slim (sl)
     -grass (gr)
....you see what I mean.
After reading a book together we use a large magnifying glass to help us 'see' blends better. You can also use a funky pair of glasses.

When we find a blend we copy it down in our notebook and then highlight where we see the blend. This is a great opportunity to draw attention to the different structures of words. While looking at our list we talked about things that we noticed. Some of the things we found were that blends can be in the beginning, at the end, or even at the beginning and at the end of a word!
When we have scavenged all the blends we can find...we read our list and feel proud!