Ending Blend Words

Hand, sand and band are the same word with a different first sound, which makes them the fastest way into this pattern. Four sounds each, and only the first one changes.

The n is the sound that goes missing. A child who writes “had” for hand has heard the word right and lost the middle of the ending. The sound boxes sheet is where that becomes visible: four squares, and the third one empty.

Wind and find are worth reading aloud together, because wind has two pronunciations and children enjoy catching that out. Both spell the ending the same way.

Ant is as short as an ending blend word gets, three sounds and three letters, which makes it the place to start the whole pattern.

Tent has the blend and a t at the front as well, so it is four sounds with the same letter doing different jobs at each end. Went, hunt and mint are the same shape.

Paint is the one to look at twice. The ai in the middle is one sound in two letters and the nt at the end is two sounds in two letters, so the word is four sounds in five letters. That contrast is the whole idea of this page, in one word.

Jump is the word this pattern is remembered by, and jup is the spelling children produce. The m is made with the lips closed and so is the p, so the two run into each other and the first one is easy to miss.

Lamp, camp and ramp are the same ending with a short a, four sounds each, and they make a good set to read in a row.

Stamp has a blend at both ends, st at the front and mp at the back, which makes it five sounds and the hardest word in this section. Leave it until the other five are easy.

Both endings here are an s followed by a sound that stops the word, and both are easier to hear than nd or mp because the s can be stretched. Nesssst.

Nest, vest and best are the same word with a different first sound. Four sounds each, and a child who reads one reads all three.

Dusk and risk are the -sk pair, and they are worth knowing for a reason that has nothing to do with blends: a k after a consonant is never written ck. The -ck and -k words on the 1st grade list practise that choice properly.

These four endings are thin, and putting them together is honest rather than lazy. English has only a handful of -ft, -lt, -lf and -lk words a young child knows, so they practise better as one mixed set than as four short ones.

Gift, left and soft are the -ft words, four sounds each, and gift is the one on this page’s picture sheet.

Belt and melt rhyme, and wolf is the odd one out. The l in all three is a sound a child can feel with the tongue, which helps: ask them where their tongue is at the end of belt, and the missing letter stops being invisible.

Milk and silk belong to this family too. They are practised on the 1st grade spelling list, where the point is the k rather than the blend, so this page leaves them there.

An ending blend is two consonants the child has to hear at the END of a word, where they are easiest to miss. Ben and bend sound almost alike to a five-year-old, and the difference is one sound at the very end, after the part of the word that carries its meaning.

A ladder holds the rest of the word still and moves one letter, so bend and bent land next to each other. Telling those two apart is the whole skill this page teaches, and it is the pair most children write the same way twice.

Ending blends are usually the last blend work a child does, so what comes next is spelling rather than more blends.

• The 1st grade spelling list puts these patterns beside the others of the same year, with spelling sheets rather than reading cards.
• Spelling rules kids learn in K-2 covers the endings that need a rule rather than an ear.
• If a beginning blend is still shaky, S blend words are the easiest family, then L blend words, then R blend words.
• Consonant blends explains what all of these have in common, and how a blend differs from a digraph.

The -nk and -ng families are the ones this page deliberately leaves out, and the reason is above: they are taught whole rather than pulled apart. Sin, sing and sink, read one after the other, is the whole of what a parent needs for them.