10 of the best Free blends and digraph games online.

Consonant blends and Consonant digraphs can be tricky to teach. I am a teacher and have a collection of online games from this site, Kisi phonics and Education.com, Top Marks and more that teach and practice both these phonic rules. They include digraph sort and matching games and digraph sound recognition and are suitable for all ages.

A while ago, 3 years to be exact, i learnt how to make apps. Single matching and jumping apps. I did this because of the reasons i just mentioned. Every time i found a site with free games it would hit a paywall. Every time i downloaded an app i could use it for 5 mins thaen it wanted money. So i started to make them.

Now to be perfectly honest I am a teacher, not an app or web developer, so my games are not quite in the league of Angry birds or PUBG ( ask a kid if you don’t know) However they work, they get kids interested and they ARE free. Free on app and free online to play, and I will not change that. I have been a teacher for far to long and know insanely annoying it is to try to find games to use in the classroom or give for homework and find a paywall. This is the reason I put my own games in here. I hope they are useful, they were made with the right intentions.

We also have articles on the best games for other English and Phonics subjects as well. These include:

• Best FREE Online CVC Games
• Best FREE Sentence Online Games
• Best FREE Short Vowels Games
• Best FREE Online Long Vowels Games
• Best FREE Online Rhyming Games

English blends and digraph game

This is one of my games, and can be played on Apple, Android and online. It is completely free, pretty simple and works. I have put a video here to show you the gameplay as it works better than a couple of pictures and also have linked in. It is a simple matching game but not just pictures it asks students to listen to the word and hit the correct spelling. It has sections for Digraphs and Blending words.

Phonics Hop and Pop

If you have seen other pages on my site you may have come across this game. Again as with all of my online games it is free online, free on Apple and Android ( though Ads on there) and it is simple enough to play. This game gives you the choice. You choose the phonics subject to play from 8 different subjects. Two of these are digraphs and blends. You simple choose your bird, choose your time and then jump to the correct word. It is designed to practice listening and recognizing sound to word relationships. It is very popular in classrooms. I have put the video to give an idea of the game play, but i jazzed the video up a little.

Do you need cool worksheets as well?

Abcya Consonant Blends

Here is one that currently at the time of write is paywall free!!

It is a nice looking game, although the vocabulary in it is probably to complex for the age of students it is aimed for and it may need teacher or parent support. Still it is one of the actual free games out there and can be played multi player which is useful in a classroom. it is a simple board game with spinner and you have to make the word to progress.

Top marks:

This basic but effective game that asks students to complete words and build a spacecraft with a digraph sound. It uses them in the beginning and ending positions. It also has about 4 levels so could be used multiple times.

It is a flash game so it may be hit and miss after December 2020. However there will be emulators that will play flash games after that time.

Literactive:

This is a flash game again so be warned after December 2020 these are not supported by most browsers. This game asks students to listen and find the correct blend in a warehouse. It is a little basic and dated but worked well enough. It has quite a long introduction to it.

Education.abc

I am not sure whats goign to happen after december 2020 as the majoirty of online games are both aging and made with Flash which is not supported after. I notice alot of websites are offering paid versions of games now so it may be this is the only way forward. You can be assured we wont. (mostly because we think there should always be free options, and a little because frankly we have no idea how we would even start to make it paid!)

This game is another basic option that asks the player to choose the correct words to fill up a space ship. It is fairly easy and requires students to just recognize the spelling of digraphs and pick the correct word.

Kizphonics

This has a large number of phonics games covering all aspects. Although we haven’t highlighted a particular game as there is a lot to choose from, they follow a pretty similar format. It is run by a guy I used to work with about 10 years ago and he does a great job. He runs a few sites and all have excellent content. The only small gripe i would have is that its labelled as Kindergarten or grade one. However i do the same to make it easier for teachers. Check this one out.

Teach your Monster to Read

We can’t do a list of great phonics games with out including teach your monster to read. It is one of the best, and always free ( like us) to play online. It also has minigames which are great for classrooms and you can pick your sound and how you want to practice it. I will link the video here to show you the main game and also the link to the mini games, however there is a full story mode as well which kids just LOVE.

Starfall

A really user friendly site with stories and games that tie in with each other. Free to use online ( at the moment) and although not loads of blending content it does have a couple of books and associated games that work really well. It is worth looking, if not for this particular subject then for other phonics topics.

Education.com (free for a little bit)

Education.com has a reasonable selection of free to play online digraph games. (as well as consonant clusters, vowels etc. but we will address those in another post). These games are fairly basic, but they do what they need to do. My favorite is Digraphs Demolition as it seems the best for sound and word recognition. I will link that game, and the page choice here. It is going last though as the paywall is fairly restrictive.

One thing to remember they let you play a couple of games then try to get you to sign up. Which is a little harsh in my opinion. Either way, its free for a couple of goes then like so many education site they try to get your money. (we try to get your money as well, but frankly we are not very good at it!!!) Be warned it is likely to ask you to sign in either way.

About the Author

Hi I’m Marc. A teacher of over 15 years, mostly English but dabbled in outdoor pursuits and media. Thought is was about time to sharing both what I have learnt during that time and the resources I have put together. On this site we aim to teach the theory and share our thoughts, but also go that one step further and give you access to the hard resources you need for your class or for you children. Feel free to take a look at our resources, email us on info@makingenglishfuncom.wpcomstaging.com, or jump on the Facebook group to ask questions. Happy learning, teaching or playing!