S Blend Words

St is the blend to start the whole topic with. Ssssstop: the s runs for as long as you want it to, and the t arrives at the end of it. No other blend makes the two sounds so easy to hear.

Stop, step and stem are three sounds and a vowel each, which is the cleanest practice on this page.

Star has the ar team in it and stand has a blend at both ends. Star is three sounds, stand is five, and the sound boxes sheet is where that difference stops being surprising.

Both sounds in sn come out of the nose and the mouth at once, which makes this family easy to say and easy to hear.

Snap, snip and snug are the three to read first. Four sounds each, one vowel apart, and children like all three.

Sniff ends in a double letter that spells one sound, so it is four sounds in five letters. Snow and snail each have a vowel team, which makes them three and four.

Sp is st with a different second sound, and children who have one usually get the other in a minute. Spin, spot, spun: four sounds each.

Spill and spell are the pair worth reading together, because the double l at the end is one sound in both and the only difference is the vowel.

Spoon is the picture word for this family, three sounds and four letters, with oo doing one job. It is on the page’s read, write and match sheet for exactly that reason.

Sw is the family where the second sound is almost a vowel, so the two run together more than in st or sp. Say sw on its own a few times before putting a word after it.

Swim and swap are the two to start with. Four sounds each, and both are words your child uses every week.

Swing has the ng ending, which is one sound rather than two, so it is four sounds in five letters. Sweet and sweep have the ee team and are four sounds each as well.

Sm is the quietest blend of the seven, and the easiest to slur. The s is a long hiss with the tongue tip up behind the teeth, and the m closes the lips and sends the sound down the nose, so there is no hard edge between them. Stretch the s and let the m arrive on its own.

Smell and small end in double letters that spell one sound, four sounds each in five letters.

Smash and smart are the other two worth practising, and smog and smug are here to make six words for the sound boxes sheet rather than because a five-year-old needs them.

Sc and sk are the same blend written two ways, and that is worth saying out loud to your child. Skip and scan start with exactly the same two sounds.

The rule behind the two spellings is the one that governs c everywhere: c says /k/ before a, o and u, and says /s/ before e, i and y. So skip, skin and sky could not be spelled with a c at all — sc before an i would say /s/. Before a, o and u both spellings turn up: scan and scoop take sc, but skunk, skull and skate take sk. Those are words to learn rather than work out.

Sky is three sounds with y as the vowel, and skunk is five, with the nk at the end that ending blend words covers properly.

A three-letter blend is three sounds run together, and it comes later than the rest of this page. Most programs teach scr, spl, spr and str in second grade, after the two-letter blends are comfortable. Our own app puts them in a second-grade lesson set of their own.

Str and spl are the two your child will meet first, in string, straw, splash and split.

Nothing new is happening here, and saying so helps. Str in string is the same job as st in stop with one more sound to hold, which is why the honest advice is to wait rather than to teach a new rule. If these feel hard, go back to the st words above for a week.

An s blend puts /s/ in front of another consonant, and the /s/ has to stay its own sound. A child who says “sap” for snap has swallowed the second letter; a child who says “sunap” has put a vowel between the two. Both are ordinary, and both are easiest to hear on a word that changes one letter at a time.

Climbing from snip to skip to spin is three different second letters behind the same /s/, which is the comparison this page is for.

S blends are the easiest family, so finishing this page usually means moving on rather than going back.

• L blend words are the natural next step, and R blend words are the hardest of the three.
• Ending blend words covers the blends at the other end of the word, which is where most spelling mistakes live.
• Consonant blends explains what all four families have in common, and how a blend differs from a digraph like sh or ch.
• If the s kept running into the next sound, sound boxes are the fix, and Elkonin boxes has a blank pack that works for any word.

If short words like cat and hop are still being worked out, CVC words is the page to be on first.