L Blend Words

Every word here starts with two sounds you can hear separately: sss then lll. Say ssslllug slowly and your child will hear both, which is the point of starting with this family.

Sled, slip and slug are the three to begin with. Each is four sounds with nothing else unusual in it, so the only new thing is the pair at the front.

Sleep and slow are the useful contrast. Both have a vowel team doing one job in two letters (ee, ow) while the sl at the front does two jobs in two letters. On the sound boxes sheet that sits side by side, which is the clearest picture of a blend your child will get.

Cl words are where the dropped sound shows up most, because cap and clap are both real words. A child who reads “cap” for clap has not misread a letter: they have skipped one.

Clap, clam and clip come first. Put clap next to cap on a scrap of paper and take the l away, then put it back. Hearing what the l adds is the whole lesson, and it takes about ten seconds.

Clay and clean each carry a vowel team, so the letters outrun the sounds: clay is three sounds in four letters, clean four in five. They belong here rather than later because both are words a five-year-old uses.

The f can be held for as long as you like, which makes fl an easy blend to hear. Fffflag. The l arrives at the end of that stretch, and a child who can hear it there can usually write it.

Flip and flop are worth teaching together. Same blend, same shape, one vowel apart, and children enjoy the pair enough to practise it twice.

Float and flew are here for the vowels, not for the blend: oa and ew each spell one sound with two letters. Float is four sounds in five letters and flew is three in four. The sheet puts them last, so they follow the four plain short-vowel words rather than interrupting them.

Blue is the word this family is remembered by, and it is also the one children get wrong. Bue for blue is the classic dropped l, and it happens because the word is so familiar that nobody sounds it out.

Blast and blink are five sounds each, with a blend at the front and a second pair of consonants at the end. They are the hardest words on this page, and they are the ones to save until bl is easy on its own.

Blow and bloom have vowel teams, so both are three sounds: b, l, and one long vowel sound. Counting them in boxes is what stops a child from writing an extra letter.

Pl is the blend where the two sounds are hardest to separate, because p is a sound that stops rather than one that can be held. Say pl on its own a few times before putting a word after it.

Plug, plum and plus share a vowel, so a child who can read one can usually read all three. Start there and add play and plan after.

Play is three sounds in four letters: p, l and the ay at the end. It is the one word here that cannot be sounded out letter by letter, which is why it is worth having on the same sheet as the others.

Gl is the thinnest of the six families, and it is the last one to teach. Five words is the honest size of it: English simply has fewer gl words a young child would meet.

Glad, glass and glue are the three that earn their place. All three are words your child hears at home, and glue is the one they will want to write.

Glove is the odd one, spelled with an o that sounds like u. Read it together rather than asking your child to work it out, and come back to it once the rest of the family is solid.

Where to go next depends on which part was hard.

• If the l kept disappearing, the sound boxes are the fix, and Elkonin boxes has a blank pack that works for any word.
• If your child is ready for the next family, R blend words are the harder one and S blend words are the easier.
• The blends at the ends of words are a separate job: ending blend words covers nd, nt, mp and the rest.
• Consonant blends is the page that explains what all of these have in common, and how they differ from digraphs like sh and ch.

If short words like cat and hop are still being worked out, go back to CVC words first. A blend is much easier to learn on top of a solid short word than alongside one.