ch and sh Digraphs Word Search

A digraph is two letters that work together to make one sound. Children meet dozens of them in Year 1, but ch and sh are usually the first — and for good reason: between them they unlock hundreds of everyday words.

This word search contains fifteen words using the ch and sh consonant digraphs, built for Reception and Year 1 children starting Phase 3 of Letters and Sounds, and for first grade readers in the US beginning digraph work. Half the words start with the digraph and half end with it, which sets up the sorting activity below. Words run left-to-right and top-to-bottom only.

CHIN · CHIP · CHOP · CHAT · RICH · MUCH · SHIP · SHOP · SHED · FISH · DISH · WISH · RUSH · SUCH · SHUT

What makes ch and sh special

Up to this point, children have been taught one letter, one sound. Digraphs break that deal: now two letters share a single sound, and the child has to stop reading C-H as two separate noises. The good news is that ch and sh have memorable personalities. SH is the quiet sound — finger to lips, “shhh”. CH is the sneeze, the train, the “choo”. Giving each digraph a gesture means a child can be reminded silently, mid-reading, with one finger to the lips.

The two are also a perfectly matched contrast pair. They look similar on the page — same H, different first letter — but sound nothing alike, which forces careful looking rather than guessing. A child who can reliably tell CHOP from SHOP has genuinely learned to attend to the whole digraph, and that attention is exactly what the phonics screening check at the end of Year 1 is probing for.

Five words worth a closer look

1. FISH and DISH are a natural rhyming pair. Have your child find both, then ask for a third rhyme that isn’t in the grid — WISH is hiding in plain sight on the word list, which makes the moment of spotting it a small triumph.
2. RICH ends with ch rather than starting with it. Ask children where the digraph is hiding. Position-spotting turns a word from something to find into something to examine.
3. CHAT and SHUT start with different digraphs but similar shapes. Write both on a whiteboard and ask what’s the same and what’s different. The H is shared; the first letter does all the work.
4. MUCH and SUCH rhyme and both end in ch. Say them in a sentence together — “there is so much such a lot!” — and ask your child to find both. High-frequency words deserve double exposure.
5. SHED may need a meaning check. If your child hasn’t met a garden shed, take ten seconds to describe one — or point at yours. A digraph word with a picture attached is twice as memorable.

Three ways to use this puzzle

As a start-or-end sort. After the grid, children divide the fifteen words two ways: first into ch words and sh words, then — the harder question — into digraph-at-the-start and digraph-at-the-end. The second sort pushes children from recognising the digraph to analysing where it lives, which is a real step up in skill.

As a silly-sentence challenge in pairs. Each pair picks three grid words and builds one spoken or written sentence using all of them. “I wish I had fish and chips.” The sillier the better — and pairs who aren’t confident writers yet can perform their sentence aloud instead, which practises exactly the same word knowledge.

One-to-one at home. For parents teaching phonics at home, teach the two gestures first — finger to lips for SH, pretend sneeze for CH — then say each word from the list and have your child make the matching gesture before hunting for it. Gesture, then search, then circle: three encounters with each digraph per word, in a game that takes five minutes at the kitchen table.

What comes next

• th and wh digraphs word search — the next pair of digraphs
• Words ending in -ck word search — the previous puzzle in the series
• All spelling word searches — the full series from foundation phonics to Year 6

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