I am not a huge fan of worksheets, I figure most anything that you can do on a worksheet you can also do with manipulatives you can hold. In large classrooms, I get it but when I am working one on one with my children or students I have tutored I prefer small hands-on activities like this digraph sorting game. My daughter has known her letter sounds for quite some time now and it was time to move on to digraphs, I am not following nor have I created a system for her but I have noticed as we are reading together that she would stop and ask about digraphs. “Why doesn’t it say ss hh ee p?” So I’d explain that s and h together make one sound not two. There are many digraphs, wh, th ph ng are some more consonant digraphs and to start with we are focusing ch and sh which are also consonant digraphs. We are focusing on them as beginning sounds presently. to keep it playful I decided to make it a sorting game.
Gather your materials. You will need toys that begin with the ch and sh sounds. I was shocked how many things I had on hand, this took 5 minutes to pull together. I also grabbed a few containers and two post it notes.Â
Write ch on one post it and sh on the other. Stick them on the containers. Congrats you have set this activity up, not so taxing was it?
Invite your little digraph detective to come by and start sorting. Small but fun activities like this that work on her skills but don’t burn her out. You can use this model for all sorts of sorting.Â
She loved it and quickly went through all the items even ones I wasn’t sure she’d get if it hadn’t been an either or activity. Having only two options gave her support for every item.
She just started full-day kindergarten last week, so our time for activities at home is limited, it is even more important now that I follow her interests and give her bite-sized pieces of learning that will support what she is learning but won’t burn her out.
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