ch, wh, sh, Teaching Trick Digraphs

I have created some hints within the letter shapes to help remind the students of words that make the same digraph sound.

Creative Picture Embedded Hints with the Letter Shapes

Digraphs might be more complex to learn than blends, especially with all the tricky sounds, silent letters, and spelling rules. I have hidden some hints within the letter shapes to help remind the students of words that make the same sound as the digraph. Example ch – one of the sounds of ch is in chomp and chicken. The letter c has teeth to chomp or chew on the chicken leg, which is very similar to the h shape.

This is the first sound of ch, as in chicken. Some kids have it mixed up with the sound /tr/. I was very surprised by this until they explained that /ch/ is for the train picture. (oops!) Some programs have a Choo-choo train for /ch/ sound and it was confusing the emergent readers.

There are many more clever hiding pictures with the digraphs and trigraphs in this set. Including the 3 different sounds for the ch.

These grapheme images incorporate the letter shapes with embedded images to help students recall the sounds that they make. Pictures aid phonemic sound recall and link to memory pathways.

3 different sounds of ch ch, k, sh:

ch – 1 st sound ch, Letter c has teeth to chew the chicken on the letter h.

ch – 2nd sound k, Christmas tree image, letter c is a sack of gifts and letter h on
the tall tree has the “sh” silent hand.

ch – 3rd sound /sh/ chef, letter c shape is uncovering the food. (French Word Origins)

3 different sounds of gh:

gh – Ghost images laughing, thinking, and shhhh hand. (3 sounds on one card)

gh – Gh sleeping and coughing with h shhhh hand.

Other digraphs

ck – Duck image with bubbles on letter c and letter k has duck feet

th – Letter t is sticking a tongue out at the thumb image on letter h.

ph – Letter p using a phone and h looks like a phone.

wr – Wrench image with silent w.

tr – Covered with train tracks and a train on letter t.

and much more……

Check out the whole set on my Teachers Pay Teachers page Pure Joy Teaching

The cards can be printed with a word list on the back. Some cards have very helpful spelling tips too. Color-coded to help highlight the digraph or trigraph.

Keep watching this space, I am working on a card game to help reinforce some of these tricky sounds and teach some spelling words at the same time.

These helpful cards are a lot like my first set for R-controlled phonics.

Have Pure Joy Teaching

CVC builder Hot dogs dramatic play easy booklet

Practice building CVC and VC words, quick set-up, and super fun

This booklet-style setup creates an easy and organized way to play and store this fun CVC and VC resource for students and teachers.

The back page is larger and has the barbecue grill image on it. This creates a fun playing surface to lay out all the vowel hotdogs on.

The top half is left open with enough space to attach a small snack-size recloseable bag. This is a great option for storing all the pieces that go with this dramatic games-style teaching resource. Sight word condiments and vowel hotdogs.

The bottom half of this resource can be printed double-sided and attached to the grill with rings or a binding machine. This lays out nicely and removes some of the reversal issues. (

VC included. CVC is very common, and VC is sometimes overlooked. The capital /I/ can be very tricky for some emergent readers. They learn that the capital I, says it’s name when it is on its own, sometimes when they see it next to another letter, like at the beginning of a sentence, it can create some confusion. ( The capital letters A and I, can be used to make words like: In, It, If, An, At.

Sight words – Tricky non-decodable words are included: said, of, the, his, all, is, do, was, are, what, as, have, too.

The sight words are grouped by color to make teaching a little easier. All the yellow mustard words have the letter s that makes the /z/ sound: his, is, was, as, has. ( I call these the sleeping snake words. He falls asleep and snores zzz…. sometimes)

All of the consonant buns should make decodable words. The letter r, is not included as an ending letter. This is not the time to teach bossy r-controlled words. This is purely for early sound-letter decoding.

The letter y, is only in the first position making the correct sound. This is not the time to teach digraphs ay, ey, oy, uy, gym, or eye. All those fun words will come later. As well as words ending with w, aw, ow, ew, should be taught later.

Here is a fun game for short o sounds with /wa/Candyland-style Fruitland.

The CVC Hot Dog builder can be found on my TPT site.

You may also like the CVC sandwich builder or the matching blends. The PB&J’s progress to the digraphs and vowel teams.

Tips for setting up the grill.

Print the grill back page on full-sized 8.5×11 paper.

Print the hot dogs vowels, single-sided, 2 to a page.

Print the Buns Consonants, double-sided, 2 to a page.
Use a piece of cardstock or scrap of laminated paper inside of the sandwich bag to make it ridged and strong enough to punch holes through.

Snack-sized reclosable bag attached with a binding machine. Pure Joy Teaching

This booklet was created with the smaller half-page grill, attached on the long side. But it could be set up with a larger full-page-sized grill. Very easy to customize to your classroom needs.

CVC Hot dog word builder. © Pure Joy Teaching 2023

Pure Joy Teaching © Hot Dog CVC VC builder — © Pure Joy Teaching CVC VC word builder hot dogs

Remember to always have Pure Joy Teaching.

Remote Learning with Google slides

Great way to teach remotely or in class with a large display cast to the classroom TV or student Chrome books.

We have been using small laminated letters in class, but it can be a struggle to find all the letters and keep them sorted. Now that I have these Google slides my lessons can be saved and sorted out quickly.

I have them sorted by the vowels. This one is the letter /e/ the vowels are red. It includes long, short, and vowel combinations like:

Silent e, ey, y that says “e”, er, ed, pre, re, ei, ei, ee, ea, e_e,

Prefixes and suffixes (pre, re, er, ed) with whole word tiles.

The first slide is color-coded for younger students. This is a neat way to help them with sorting out the line place for the letters and to aid them in making the left-to-right reading connection. Green for go, Yellow in the middle, Red stop. This is the direction of reading and writing. * The teacher can choose any of the letters the student will need before the slide is sent to the student. This slide is a good one for CVC words or small 2 & 3-letter words.

This slide is for the small 2 letter words that make the long e sounds.

Great for open syllable words: Words like he, we, be, me, & 3 letters she.

* Notice here that the /sh/ tile is one box to drag and drop. This is to help students make the phonics connection that /sh/ is one sound digraph and NOT two separate sounds /s/h/.

Link HERE

If you like these slides and think they will work in your classroom or remote learning world, you can get them from my shop at TPT. TeachersPayTeachers.

Awesome Alphabet Poems

Find Cards HERE

Find Book on Amazon

Air Writing ABC Book

Download and print the flashcards for this book. Teachers Pay Teachers

For play-based learning; with Air Writing

Students can pretend to be an airplane, and mirror the letter movements of the teacher. This exercise can help them learn the correct starting and stopping points of the capital letters. The helpful green dot shows the starting point of the letter, with numbered steps for letters that have more than one step. Valuable teacher instruction pages and Flash Card pages that can be cut out of the book to use in class. The reversed alphabet chart on the back cover of this book, helps to remind the teacher in which direction to make the letters. Very helpful when the book or the card is facing the students.

Mirror image; Why does it look backwards?

Remember my right is your left, when we are facing each other. This book will help teachers so the students will NOT be seeing the reversed Image by mistake. It can aid and support future handwriting success, while learning feels like play.

Find on Amazon

Read Write and Paint in classroom

The kids in room 6, really enjoyed the story this week.

When the pig hides the paints from the other pets, one little girl said, “I see them hiding in the hay.”

The class did not think the pig would share the paints.

After reading we talked about ways that we might paint like the pets in the story. Next week they will make story bubbles and write sentences based on the book.

I can hardly wait to see the art.

Links to the downloads HERE.

And find book Here.

Munch Math Match with Waffles

Take a look HERE.

For letter of the week W. Waffle Math Match, based on the book –

When Walruses Want Waffles, By D Passmore.

Waffle Math Match can be used in lots of ways:

Play it like “Go Fish” each player would have their own walrus to feed the matched waffles to.

Play it like “Memory Game” each player would have their own walrus to feed the matched waffles to.

One on One with the teacher, Match the numbers, and feed the walrus the matched sets.

Use addition, Subtraction, and Equals symbols to work out math equations.

Roll a die, and match the numbers to the waffles until they are all feed to the walrus.

For W letter of week lessons, you may also like the waffle letters.

Find on Amazon

Find the book on Amazon, the book is filled with a whole lot of “W” words :

Wheelbarrow, wall, whale, wobble, waiter, wardrobe, washroom, whip cream, world, water, waves, winner, wrestle, wishing well, wishes, wasps,…

And there are lots of true facts about walruses at the back of the book.

Different ways to Use Flashcards

There are lots of ways to use flashcards in the classroom.

Hook them together: a small little hole punched in the corner of each one will keep them together, & make them easier to flip. * I love to hang my flashcards right next to my circle time chair. The flashcards add to the decor of the room instead of creating clutter on my shelf.
Dry Erase: Some cards need to be laminated first, but Dry Erase pens are great for tracing and circling counted items. This works well at the writing table and can easily be put on a tray as a choose your own activity on the math shelf.

The mnemonic abcs & handwriting cards are very useful cards to link together.

Take a look below or jump to my Teachers Pays Teachers site

Alphabet Poems Trace & Learn Letter Formation Cards: Awesome Animals ABC

Mnemonic Alphabet cards Lowercase letters with pictures a-z short vowels

Air Writing Flash Cards with Teacher directions

Try my starfish count and clip cards at my shop.

or my heart cards Here.

Teaching with Letter of week creation facts is fun

In my preschool classroom, we use letter-of-the-week items. I try to include many real creation facts in the week. This has had an amazing result on the students. Many parents are surprised at the new thing their kids are interested in.

One example is the letter O for octopus.

Octopus lives in the ocean, has 8 arms, and squits ink. Cool right!

I have grouped together a book, counting cards, and few playdough activities, and a coloring sheet.

The book Oliver the Octopus

Using olives, onions, on, off, odd, oval, opal, and open, all of these words are better than using the word orange. Yes, the words do start with the letter o. The phonemic sound is actually the r-controlled sound “or” and the letter g is softened to the soft “j” sound by the silent e. These can be confusing concepts for emergent readers. Now that I have started using easy-to-decode words with my students, my results have improved.

I save the word orange for lessons about r-controlled words and reasons for silent e.

Christian Valentines from teacher to students

My first year teaching in a christian preschool, I was caught off guard by Valentine’s day. The stores did not have the right kind of valentine that I wanted to give to my students.

There were some very creative moms in my class and they inspired me to make up my own Christian Valentines for my students. Using the shape and size of a standard Hershey bar, I created a wrapper that said, “HE IS LOVE.”

The kids loved. One precious little boy lite up with excitement, ” A big candy bar, all for me.” He was overwhelmed by the large size in his small hand.

His wonderful mom said, he needs to eat lunch first and it might be nice to share it that big candy bar.

In the Christian classroom we try to always bring every holiday back to God is the reason for the season. Valentine’s day is no different. One of our memory verse is:

God is Love.

1 John 4:16.

So the phrase “He is Love, ” makes sense, for his holiday gift.

I put other verses on the back, and left a space for me to write their names. The original master copy is signed by me, which saves me time each year.

I have put this item on Tpt, if your interested in this download printable check it out HERE!

Blessings.

Be sure to check out: Answers in Genesis website. It has lots of free video for kids and adults. It is a valuable resource for parents and teachers. My family loves it.

Purchase excellent resources from the Answers in Genesis Bookstore

The NEW Answers Book 1