Blending Cards for Early Readers

Blending Cards help students segment, blend, and read words in a variety of phonics patterns. They are great for kindergarten and first grade students or second or third grade students who need extra support with these early phonics skills. The blending cards is a core teaching resource in any classroom and can be used during whole-group or small-group instruction.

My son entered Kindergarten this past year.  Being a teacher, I noticed that there were a few areas of learning to read where he needed a little more help.  Blending was one of them.  It is still a weakness for him, mainly because it hasn’t been a focus of instruction.

I created these blending cards to help my son learn to read.  I originally started with just the Short A cards, but have branched out and now offer many other phonics patterns.

If you’re looking for How to Print the Blending Cards in smaller sizes, see this blog post for detailed instructions.

What is Included on Each Blending Card

The cards are set up so that students:

1. Say the sounds • • • (with the large dots)
2. Blend the sounds (with the dotted lines)
3. Say it fast (with the arrow)

The dotted lines indicate which sounds are continuous sounds and which are stop sounds. Continuous sounds have dotted lines before and after the sound to show that it continues. Stop sounds stop at the letter.

Here is a blog post on continuous and stop sounds that you might find helpful when working with students.  I find that it is good to be very specific and deliberate in teaching these sounds.  The real benefit is when students progress further in their reading skills to have the basic skills automatically.

Letters that make up vowel and consonant digraphs and r-controlled sounds are placed closer together to indicate that they make one sound.

Take a look at the blending cards and the different ways to print them.

Printing, Pocket Chart & Google Slides

The CVC Blending cards are available in three different formats. There is the original full-page format that can be printed in a variety of sizes. There is a Pocket Chart format that includes the word and a black and white image. The Pocket Chart format is available for these sets:

• Short Vowel CVC Words
• Digraphs for Short Vowels
• R Blends for Short Vowels
• S Blends & Clusters for Short Vowels
• L Blends & Clusters & tw, the, qu
• Final Blends & Clusters
• VCE Words
• Short Vowels with CK

Digital Blending Cards

New is a Google Slides version for many of the sets. Students can click on the blue box to reveal the picture. Take a look at the CVC Google Slide version below.

Blending Cards with Pictures for use in Pocket Charts

Many of the blending cards come with pictures. The pictures are in black and white and can easily be printed on colored paper to differentiate phonics patterns. The images are included for FREE in sets where images are available. Not all sets have images. Read more about the blending cards with images.

How I Use the Blending Cards in the Classroom

These Blending Cards are perfect for Kindergarten, first and second-grade reading. The cards can be used for instruction for kindergarten and first grade and RtI for second grade.

Depending on the group of students, I use 3-4 per small group session with students.  I will usually have a set of words for that week, about 14-18 related words, and then rotate them throughout the week.  We also practiced some of the cards whole group, too, using the same process in small groups.

As noted above, we work through the three parts of the card: segmenting, blending, and reading.  We usually go slowly through the blending so that students (and I) can hear the smoothness and connected sounds.

How to Printing the Blending Cards

The Blending Cards come in a full-page PDF. Some also come in a pocket-chart size. We intentionally created the full-size cards so that teachers could use them in a variety of situations.

The cards are created full page for whole group, but can be printed 1/4 page for small groups. The images in this blog post are printed 1/4 page and have my five-year-old’s hands. The cards are all black and white for easy printing and copying.

For more information on How to Print the Blending Cards, click over to this post that explains how to print them in a variety of configurations.

Video about the Blending Cards

Do you want to see more? Here are the blending cards in action.

How to Purchase the Blending Cards

The Blending Cards are available as a complete BUNDLE and as individual sets.  Click here to purchase them on my website.  They are also available on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Purchase them all in a bundle to save money and have them readily available for you.  Purchasing the bundle saves you 20% off purchasing each set individually.

• Short Vowel CVC Words
• Nonsense CVC Words
• Digraphs for Short Vowels
• Decodable Sight Words
• R Blends for Short Vowels
• S Blends & Clusters for Short Vowels
• L Blends & Clusters & tw, the, qu
• Final Blends & Clusters
• VCE Words
• Long & Other Vowel Digraphs
• R-controlled Vowels

Other Resources that Compliment the Blending Cards

This past spring, I wrote a series of blog posts on early reading.  Included in that series are these posts:

• Phonemic Awareness
• Why do we teach nonsense words?
• Teach Phonics with Your Grade Level Team
• Decodable Text vs. Predictable or Patterned Text
• Tips for Student Success When Blending and Segmenting Words
• When Your Child Doesn’t Learn to Read in Kindergarten
• Five Hands-on Sight Words for Kindergarten

After I finished creating the Blending Cards, I created a series of products that utilize the same segmenting and blending process specifically for CVC words.

• Phonics Passages by Word Family – for CVC words
• Cut & Paste CVC Phonics Cards that turn into flashcards
• Phoneme Blending Cards – for CVC words
• Phonics Worksheets – for CVC Words
• Phonics Worksheets – for Digraphs
• Phonics Worksheets – for Blends

We have also created Phonics Worksheets that utilize these blending cues.  Check out the Short A Phonics Worksheets and the Short I Worksheets.  These worksheets have 18 different templates with over 140 usable pages per vowel.