About this activity
Twelve words with /k/ in the middle: monkey, pocket, rocket, chicken, bucket, ticket, bacon, hockey, cookie, taco, soccer, peacock. All two syllables, and several of them — pocket, rocket, bucket, ticket — share a shape, which makes the target position easy to hear once you have heard it in one of them.
How to use it in a session
Split the word at the sound: mon-key, poc-ket. Splitting gives the child a final /k/ and then an initial one, both easier than the medial version, and rejoining them is the target. The pocket-rocket-bucket-ticket group is worth doing together, since the shared rhyme lets the child hear that the changing part is not the target. Six minutes covers the twelve.
What to listen for
Listen for the sound weakening in the middle of the word rather than being replaced outright. A softened, half-made /k/ between two vowels is easy to accept on a quick pass and is not the target. Watch peacock and taco, where the /k/ falls at the start of the second syllable — a slightly different position from pocket, where it closes the first.
Carrying it home
Cookie, pocket, chicken and soccer come up in ordinary days. Asking a family to listen for one of them, rather than for the sound in general, is a task that gets done.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Kindergarten through third, usually after initial /k/ is stable.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all twelve cards play free in the browser.
- Why work on position separately?
- Because they are different motor tasks. A child can be accurate at the start of a word and lose the sound in the middle, and practice on initial words does not fix the middle.