Free Diphthong Puzzles – Playdough To...

Diphthongs can be a difficult concept to grasp for many students but fun, hands-on activities like these diphthong puzzles can help.

The game is a perfect addition to your literacy centers and can easily be used throughout the entire school year.  For more literacy fun, check out our Vowel Team Centers in our shop!

Getting Ready

To prep, I printed the diphthong puzzles (below) on cardstock and laminated them for extra durability so that they could be used year after year.

Once I finished laminating them, I cut them out. I found it easiest to use a paper trimmer to cut out all of the puzzles first.

I then went back and cut out the individual pieces of each puzzle with scissors.

Diphthong Puzzles

The set contains 8 different puzzles. Each puzzle contains three pieces: one piece identifies the diphthong and the other two have pictures that correspond with the chosen diphthong.

Prior to doing this activity with my own students, we went through all eight of the diphthongs as a class and talked about the two vowels and the sounds they make.

Since this can be difficult for students to fully understand, it is important to not only tell students the sound that each diphthong makes, but also show students how to make that sound using their mouth. This will help them better learn the sound.

RELATED: Free Diphthong Clip Cards and Digraph Wheels

Students started by laying out all of the puzzle pieces out. Then they chose one of the diphthong puzzle pieces and read it out loud.

They looked through all of the pieces looking for a puzzle piece that had a picture containing that diphthong sound. In this example, the “launch” was a perfect fit.

Once the puzzle had all three pieces, the student placed it to the side and started over until all of the puzzles were complete.

Grab Your Set

Ready to print your free set?! Click the blue download button below to grab your puzzles and then hop over and snag our Vowel Team Centers, too!