Blending Simple Words

Most of the short words we read are like a sandwich. They have a consonant at the start, a vowel in the middle, and another consonant at the end. We call these CVC words. The vowel is the 'glue' that holds the word together. Common vowels are $a, e, i, o,$ and $u$. To read these words, we don't just say the letters; we say the sounds they make. Imagine each sound is a bead on a string. When we pull the string tight, the sounds touch and make a word!

When we read, we use a trick called blending. Instead of stopping after every sound, we try to stretch the sounds out so they touch. Think of a slide at the park. You start at the top with the first sound and don't stop until you hit the bottom! This helps our brain recognize the word faster. If we say $/h/ ... /o/ ... /p/$, it is hard to hear the word. But if we slide them like $hhhh-oooo-pppp$, we hear hop right away!

Sometimes we need to do the opposite of blending. This is called segmenting. It is like taking a LEGO tower and pulling it apart into three separate bricks. This helps us when we want to spell a word. If you want to write 'pig', you have to listen for the first brick $/p/$, the middle brick $/i/$, and the last brick $/g/$. Knowing how to pull words apart makes you a master writer!