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Letter Sounds and Blending: Read Words with Bip the Robot

Letter Sounds and Blending: Read Words with Bip the Robot

Learn letter sounds and blending: match letters to sounds, hear first sounds and push sounds together to read words like cat, sun and ship.

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What you'll learn

  • The sound each letter makes, not just its name
  • How to hear the first sound in a spoken word
  • Oral blending: pushing spoken sounds together, like d-o-g, to hear dog
  • How to read simple CVC words using sound buttons and blending
  • Ten digraphs, letter pairs that make one sound, such as sh and ee
  • How to read short sentences like a cat in a hat

What's inside

  1. Sound Garden
  2. Frog Pond
  3. Robot Talk
  4. Blending Train
  5. Letter Buddies
  6. Word Magic
  7. Star Stage (10 questions)

About this adventure

Letter Sounds and Blending is a free interactive phonics game that teaches children aged 4–6 to match letters to their sounds and blend those sounds to read simple words. It follows the Reception (EYFS) phonics goals.

Bip the robot guides players around Sound Town. They grow flowers that each show a letter and its sound, find the first sound of words at a frog pond, and use robot talk to practise oral blending: hearing d-o-g and picking the dog. On the Blending Train they tap the sound buttons under each letter, then slide along an arrow to blend the sounds into a word.

Later chapters introduce digraphs, which are two letters that make one sound, such as sh and ee. Children then swap one letter to change cat into hat and read short sentences like a cat in a hat. A ten-question Star Stage at the end mixes questions from every chapter.

Questions and answers

What is blending in phonics?

Blending means saying the sounds in a word one at a time and pushing them together to hear the whole word, so c-a-t becomes cat. It is the main skill children use to read new words in Reception.

Why do children learn letter sounds instead of letter names?

Children read using the sound a letter makes, not its name: the letter s says sss, not ess. Knowing the sounds lets them blend straight away, which is why many schools teach pure sounds without an extra uh on the end.

What is a digraph?

A digraph is two letters that make one sound, such as sh in ship or ee in bee. In many phonics schemes a short line under the pair shows it is one sound, while a single letter gets a dot.

What age is this phonics game for?

It is made for children aged 4 to 6, especially those in Reception working towards the EYFS reading goal. Older children who need more practice with letter sounds and blending can use it too.

What does the game include and how long does it take?

The game has six short chapters and a final ten-question Star Stage, and takes about 40 minutes to play through. Children can start any chapter from the map, and Bip reads every instruction aloud.

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