Overview
The children will read and write words ending with -um—words like yum, plum, hum, and gum. 

Literacy Activities
Yum! Grab something with your thumb

• Before the activity, cut out the picture cards and put them face down in the pie pan. 
• Read the Little Jack Horner Nursery Rhyme together.
• Have children take turns having pretend gum (sticky tack or tape) on the top of their thumb and putting their sticky thumbs in the –um pie pan to pull out an –um picture card. 
• As children pull the –um picture cards out of the pie pan, have them read the word on the picture card aloud and then say, “I put in my thumb and pulled out a _um! Yum!”
• After going through all the -um picture cards, replace them with the -um word cards and repeat the activity. 

More Practice
Identify, blend and manipulate sounds 

• Let the children make a target word (e.g. yum) from letter cards (see below) and then let them make different words by changing either of the consonants or the vowel. 
  • Change the beginning sound(s): yum → hum; hum → gum
  • Change the vowel sound: hum → ham; hum → him
  • Change the ending sound(s): hum → hut; gum → gut; hum → hug
• For each of the words the children make, have them produce the sounds for each letter and then blend those sounds back into the word. 

Read target words in a text 

• Have the children underline the words that end in -um in the target text Yum Plum (see below). 
• Read the Yum Plum text to the children. 
• Engage the children in reading the Yum Plum text simultaneously with you. 
• Read the Yum Plum text again fading support. 

Write about the activity using target words and phrases 

• Display target words on a word wall (i.e. yum, plum, hum, gum) and then engage the children in one of the following: 
  • Review the lesson activity, give the children a story starter (e.g., We put gum on our thumbs and then…) and ask them to write about the activity using their own words. 
  • Re-read the target text (see below) and permit the children to write their own version of the text.