About this activity
Fourteen words to break apart: map into /m/ /a/ /p/, sun into /s/ /u/ /n/, cat into /c/ /a/ /t/, bus into /b/ /u/ /s/. Segmenting is the other half of the blending pair and the harder one — it is what spelling depends on, because a child who cannot hear three sounds in map has no way to choose three letters.
How to use it in a session
Use fingers or taps, one per sound, and make the child do it rather than watching you. The physical marker is what makes an abstract task concrete, and children who segment accurately with fingers usually keep the skill after the fingers stop. Start with words whose sounds are easy to hold — sun, map — and leave the stop-initial ones like cat and top until the routine is established.
What to listen for
Listen for the vowel getting lost. Many children segment map as /m/ /p/, hearing the consonants and skipping the middle, which is the most common error at this stage and the reason the vowel is worth stretching. Watch for syllable segmenting instead of phoneme segmenting — a child who taps once for cat is hearing a syllable, which is a real skill and an earlier one.
Carrying it home
Ask the child to say a word in slow motion, sound by sound. Doing it with their name first usually gets a laugh and makes the idea clear, and after that any word in the room will do — cup, hat, bed. It needs no materials and no preparation.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Kindergarten and first grade, alongside blending.
- Do I need an account?
- No, it plays free in the browser.
- Which comes first, blending or segmenting?
- Blending is usually easier and comes first. Segmenting is harder and matters more for spelling, so both are worth practising rather than one at a time.