Can someone explain how I can teach my DD how to blend?

[clemette]

DD (4) is desperate to learn how to read. She knows her letters and has been using Little Books 360 scheme at nursery so she can recognise some words in their entireity, and can sound out the individual letter sounds (her nursery does letterland as well) but I can't work out how to teach her to blend phonemes.
If she was starting school in September I would happily just wait until she gets to school, but she doesn't start until January and I wondered if there was anything I could do to help her. I am a secondary school teacher but this is all baffling to me!

Or - would I be best to wait? Don't want to be a pushy parent but feel I should encourage her own enthusiasm.
Thank you.

You're best to wait! (I'm a reception teacher.) What you can do, which will help, is sing nursery rhymes, play kim's game, play simon says, play 'I went to the supermarket and in my bag I put..', read to her, play games like touch your h-ea-d, ch-ee-k, zip up your c-oa-t etc. where you sound out words for her to hear. 4 is very, very young so PLENTY of time. I understand wanting to encourage her enthusiasm but blending justs 'clicks', you won't be able to get her to do it before she's done loads and loads of the other stuff. Sorry if I'm teaching my granny to suck eggs! HTH a bit.

No - that's very helpful. I will definitely have a go at sounding out the phonemes in spoken words.
Thank you.

what's kim's game?

we teach this at my school but I agree, I know she's desperate to read but it's not all about the blending.

Kim's Game is to develop observation and memory

It's usually played with a tray of small objects. The child looks at the objects and the tray is covered then an object is removed or added and the child has to look again and say what is missing or added.

A good interactive version is available here