How to engage little hands with Final Consonant Deletion

‘Woof’ and ‘meow’. Those were her first words. Not ‘mum’ or ‘dad’. And mind you… we didn’t even own a cat or a dog but a little bird who occasionally nipped her finger (which perhaps explains why she doesn’t say ‘tweet’). My point is, little kids LOVE animals and it is usually our littlest kids who still present with final consonant deletion.

This old flip book was one of the first things that I ever shared for Final Consonant Deletion a few years back now. It is my favourite way to introduce FCD – that just as animals have tails, so do words. Animals look funny without their tail sounds and words sound funny without their tails sounds.

Parents gave me such great feedback at how much their kids loved the interactive side of this approach that I decided to make a packet targeted for kids who enjoy doing things with their hands.

I have 4 ‘animal’ themes so that you can focus on separate units: Farm Animals, Pet Animals, Zoo Animals and Forest Animals (each with 12 animals per set, so 48 in total). I have chosen mostly 1-syllable words as they are easier to say, but have thrown a few multisyllabic animal names in there to ensure generalisation. View now in my TpT Store.

Containing 5 activities: Flip Book, Tail Sound Puzzle, Drill & Draw, Match the Tail and Listening for Tails (auditory discrimination).

This is the BEST way that I found to teach the concept of Final Consonant Deletion – through Puzzles! This phonological process should be eliminated between 3-3.5 years, so you are likely going to be working with a population of little ones who LOVE puzzles and finding things! Because there are 48 animals…do the math, 96 separate pieces… I usually focus on one ‘animal unit’ at a time. When your child matches the animal together, we practice saying the name of the animal, and when I join the ‘tail’ on, I make sure that is when I say the final sound. Try to draw out and blend the sounds ‘caaaaaaat’ instead of ‘ca-t’. If the child deletes the final tail, I take the ‘tail’ picture away and tell them that they have forgotten to say the animal’s tail sound, so let’s try again and remember to say it. This is a POWERFUL visual, it really helps your students to see the sound and concept that you are teaching.

I have revitalised my Flip Book using 1 syllable animals only, so there are 24 pictures. I found that this was a really quick way to get some fast practice in – “Can we flip through and finish the book in our last minute?”.

These next handouts are in a Drill & Draw style – perfect to either upload on your iPad to limit the prep and printing OR you can give as homework (a parent fave as there are lots of opportunities to practice). Kids have to do 5 drills before they can ‘draw’ the tail on the animal.

Once again, thinking of the age of the population you are likely to be working with, the Match the Tail sheets are great for interactive kids. There are two ways I like to use this – one is just to get the child to say the animal and draw it’s tail. The second is to get them to find the tail first, then use their finger/pencil to connect the two and help blend. Drawing to the tail reminds them to say their tail sound.  The Listening for Tails board is a great way to work on auditory discrimination and develop student’s awareness for Final Consonant Deletion. I usually start here with therapy and see if they can tell me if they notice anything funny about the animals? I then introduce the concept and alternate in a random order ‘mou_, mou_, mouse’ and get them to put a counter on the pictures. We talk about how silly the animal looks and sounds without it’s tail. I also use this for generalisation to real words to see if they can hear if I put a tail on my word.

As a huge Phonology Fan, be sure to follow my Pinterest board on this topic.