About this activity
Ten words with the voiceless /th/ in the middle: birthday, bathtub, nothing, anything, bathroom, marathon, toothache, healthy, panther, toothless. All are two or three syllables, since a medial sound needs a word long enough to have a middle, and several are compounds — bathtub, bathroom, toothache — where the /th/ sits at the join.
How to use it in a session
Split at the sound: bath-tub, birth-day. In the compounds this is especially clean, because the split is also a word boundary and gives the child a final /th/ followed by a whole word. Nothing and anything are the harder pair, since the /th/ is in the middle of a single word with no natural break. Five minutes covers the ten.
What to listen for
Listen for the sound weakening rather than being replaced. Between two vowels a /th/ often arrives with insufficient tongue protrusion and comes out closer to an /f/ or a /d/. Watch marathon and panther, where the target is in an unstressed syllable and carries the least force in the word.
Carrying it home
Birthday, bathroom, nothing and healthy come up in ordinary days. Asking a family to listen for one word at a predictable moment — bathroom at bath time — gives them a task they can keep.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Second through fifth, usually after initial and final /th/ are stable.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all ten cards play free in the browser.
- Why are compounds easier?
- Because the split is a word boundary. Bath-tub gives the child a final /th/ followed by a familiar word, both of which they may already produce — nothing has no such natural break.