2nd Grade
Speech & Language
About 10 minutes

S-Blend Picture Cards

Cut out the cards. Print 2 copies to play memory or go fish. Say each word with a smooth s-blend!

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This is sheet #65924601.

How to do it

Cut out the cards.
Say each word with a smooth s-blend.
Print 2 copies to play memory or go fish.

Teaching tip

Every time a card is played, the child says the word.

S-Blend Picture Cards for 2nd grade (s-blends), free printable — Printable preview

About this worksheet

Nine picture cards with the blend in blue and a blend tag on each card. Each version mixes in different words, so printing a few versions gives you a bigger deck.

What kids practice

An s-blend is an s sound joined to another consonant at the start of a word, like sn in snake, st in star and sw in swing. Both sounds are said, with no stop in between. Many children can say s by itself but leave it out of blends (nake for snake, top for stop), or add a little vowel between the sounds (suh-nake). Practicing s-blends helps with clear speech, and it also helps with reading and spelling, because kids learn to hear both sounds at the start of the word. Common Core links this to reading and spelling blends (RF.2.3), but the speech practice itself has no Common Core code.

Watch for

Dropping the s (nake for snake). Go back to a long sssss before the word.
Adding a vowel (suh-nail). Keep the s and the next sound touching, like a train with no gap between the cars.
Writing only one letter of the blend (sake for snake). Say the word slowly and listen for both sounds.
Thinking sc and sk are different sounds. Scarf and skate both start with the same sk sound.
If your child is hard to understand or not improving, ask a speech-language pathologist for a check.

It's free to print, as many copies as you need. See the full s-blends guide for 2nd grade.