Build The Digraph Houses: A Simple Phonics Activity for Kindergarteners

by learningstepbystep | Dec 7, 2023 | DIY Crafts & Activities, Educational Content | 0 comments

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Sticky notes and more sticky notes, please! We enjoy working with large and small sticky notes on our learning journey. Here is a simple Sticky Note activity you can use to work on teaching your little ones the sounds of digraphs after they have mastered the vowel sounds.

What are Digraphs?

Digraphs are two letters combined to make one sound or phoneme. For example, the ph in the word photo. The Ph in the word photo together makes the phoneme /f/.

Did you know:

When the letters in a digraph are both consonants, are they called consonant digraphs?

When the letters are vowels, they are called vowel digraphs or vowel teams.

Examples of consonant diagraphs are:
Sh, wh, th, ph, ch ph, ng, ck

Please note: On our activity, you will see the letters ‘Qu’ included as a digraph. QU is taught as a digraph to young readers even though it does not have two consonants or vowels. Qu is a combination of the phonemes /k/ and /w/, but Q and U are usually together, so Qu is taught as a digraph.

What you will need for this activity:

Learning journal
Markers
Sticky notes
Pencil
Crayons

How to put this simple activity together:

Putting this activity together was pretty simple. I placed the sticky notes into our learning journal in groups of four.

I then used a black marker to draw an outline around them and drew a triangle on each house for a roof.
I then wrote a consonant digraph on the top of each house.
I also wrote the words I wanted my little ones to learn or review on the sticky notes in each house. I wrote words that had the digraphs at the beginning and end so that my little ones could see and understand that a digraph does not only come at the beginning of a word.

How this activity was presented to my children:

Step 1: I removed all the sticky notes from the houses and piled them together. I took one from each house until all of them were in a pile. I did this because I wanted my littles to read and listen to the sound they heard and find the two letters making the sound they heard.

Step 2: We read all the consonant digraphs at the top of the houses and made the corresponding sounds.

Step 3: The girls were each given a pile of sticky notes with the words to read and then placed the sticky notes with the words in the houses to which they belonged.

Step 4: When they sorted all the words and placed them in their correct spots, they chose a crayon to underline the consonant digraph in the words—some were underlined at the beginning and some at the end.

Step 5: After finding all the digraphs in the houses, the girls drew pictures under the sticky notes to represent each word. For the words that they could not illustrate, I told them to write the word instead.

Step 6: After drawing, I intended for the girls to colour their pictures, but after illustrating each word, their little hands were a bit tired, so we did not bother to. I believe colouring illustrations at home with older children or in a classroom would be fun.

This activity is also great for:

Spacial awareness
Concentration
Hand-eye coordination
Pincer grasp
Visual scanning
Bilateral Hand coordination
Hand strength

When we worked on completing this activity, I saw how it could be used to teach/review other educational concepts, so I will share a few soon.

We do hope you find this activity useful.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by sending us a message or visiting us @learning.stepbystep on Instagram, Learning Step By Step on Facebook and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for educational resources that will help you and your littles on their learning journey as they continue to Learn Step By Step!

Thank you for being here!

Kimberlee and the Learning Step By Step Team.