Rhyme Town Week 7: Oral Blending (Farm)

Based on Old Macdonald and Baa Baa Black Sheep

Rhyme Town Week 7 is a week of oral blending activities for Phase 1 phonics in Nursery and Reception (ages 3 to 5). Children practise listening to words spoken in separate sounds and blending the sounds together to hear the whole word. Using familiar farm animals, colours and objects gives children a practical context for developing this important early phonics skill before they begin blending written words.

Alongside the pre-reading activities, children develop their pre-writing skills by practising the X shape through practical mark making and gross and fine motor activities. The farm theme runs through both strands, with activities using sheep, tractor tracks, natural materials and sensory mark making.

What’s included in Week 7?

You’ll get five pre-reading phonics lessons and five pre-writing and mark making lessons, with a lesson plan for each, a launchable interactive presentation and supporting resources. The pre-reading lessons give children repeated opportunities to hear segmented words and blend the sounds orally, while the pre-writing activities develop control and coordination through different ways of forming the X shape.

Pre-reading lessons (oral blending)

• Lesson 1: Put the animals on the farm – listen to a segmented animal word, blend the sounds and choose the correct animal
• Lesson 2: What sound does a… make? – blend the animal word and identify the animal and its sound
• Lesson 3: Point to the sheep – orally blend colour words and find the correct coloured sheep
• Lesson 4: Farm I spy – blend segmented words to identify objects and animals in a farm picture
• Lesson 5: Farm bingo – orally blend farm words and find the corresponding picture on the bingo board

Pre-writing lessons (X shape)

• Lesson 1: Wool winding – wind wool around a cardboard square to form an X
• Lesson 2: Tractor tracks – use toy tractors and paint to make crossing tracks and form X shapes
• Lesson 3: Mark the sheep – draw an X on each sheep
• Lesson 4: Natural materials – use sticks, leaves and stones to make X shapes
• Lesson 5: Mud sensory writing – practise making X shapes in a sensory writing tray using cocoa or hot chocolate powder

Resources in this pack

• Week 7 lesson plans
• Week 7 lesson presentation (launchable)
• Farm bingo
• Marking sheep activity
• Coloured sheep activity
• Pre-writing card

How to use Week 7

Each lesson plan explains the session step by step and tells you which slides and resources to use. The oral blending activities can be repeated as short listening games or warm-ups, giving children plenty of practice hearing separate sounds and blending them together to identify a word.

The lessons don’t all need to be taught in one week, so you can adapt the pace to suit your children. Rhyme Town can be used with a whole class or small group, and can also be used as an intervention for children who need additional support with Phase 1 phonics and readiness to write.

The pre-writing activities can be taught as focused adult-led sessions or revisited within your Early Years learning environment, giving children repeated opportunities to practise the movements needed to form an X in different ways.

Rhyme Town is a Phase 1 phonics and pre-writing programme rather than a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme, so it can be used alongside your school or setting’s chosen SSP to build listening and phonological awareness before and during early phonics teaching.

Curriculum links

• Phase 1 phonics: oral blending, including listening to segmented words and blending the sounds together to identify the whole word
• Phonological awareness: hearing and combining individual sounds within spoken words
• EYFS Communication and Language: listening, attention, understanding and responding to spoken language
• EYFS Physical Development: gross and fine motor control and early mark making through forming the X shape

Want to see how this week fits into the full 14-week sequence? Download the Rhyme Town progression document or explore the complete Rhyme Town Phase 1 phonics scheme.