Consonant Digraph Garden

Consonant Digraph Garden

 

Part of learning to read is learning to recognize the various graphemes within a word. A grapheme is the visual representation of a phoneme (the smallest unit of sound). Although we stress learning individual letter sounds, we often forget that there are 44 phonemes in the English language and only 26 letters…which means there are lots of other sounds to learn besides just the alphabet.

In this activity, we learned three of the consonant digraphs:  /th/, /sh/, and /ch/. I used Starfall’s Interactive Games to introduce each digraph to Big Brother prior to the activity (we did one at a time). Here are each of them individually:

::  Digraph /th/

::  Digraph /sh/

::  Digraph /ch/

 

Here’s what you’ll need to create your own consonant digraph garden:  construction paper, a marker, a glue stick, and scissors!

 

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1. Cut out your circle (for the center of the flower) and several petals in 3 colors.

 

 

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2. Write the consonant digraph in the center of each circle.

 

 

 

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 3. Tape 2 pieces of blue construction paper together and use a glue stick to place the stem and center of the flower.

 

 

 

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 4. Write the words on both sides of the petal. You may want to underline the digraph in each word to make it more obvious for your child. I would encourage you to include words with the digraph at the beginning and the end of the word.

 

 

 

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 5. Introduce your child to the digraphs. We used Starfall’s Interactive Games. Believe it or not, this is the very first time Big Brother has used Starfall (or my laptop). :)

 

 

 

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 6. Have your child add the corresponding petals to each digraph center. Ask him/her to decode (sound out) each word as he/she glues it in place.

 

 

 

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 All done!

 

 

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Learn more reading tips in my eBook I Can Teach My Child to Read!

8 Comments

  1. great list!

    I can never think of all the stuff I need.

    I don’t have to sell our house to buy these supplies.

  2. I did this yesterday with my girls and a they had a great times. We did not d it exactly like youdi but it stillworked and my 2 yr old loved h website. Thank you.

  3. Hi,

    We love this activity and would like to link to it from the Teach Your Monster to Read blog. Would you be happy for us to do this? We will of course link and credit you.

    Thanks
    Dannie

  4. Thank you for the great pictures and detailed instructions! This will be a great center activity. I think I’ll follow it up by providing a photocopied story (1 per student) and have them highlight each consonant digraph throughout the book the same color as the center of the coordinating flower. This will be great for my 1st graders, but also an RTI activity for a few of my struggling 2nd graders.

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