Why is it important to teach blending and basic patterns?
Blending sounds into whole words is something that speakers do automatically when they speak. The words catalog and category have some similar sounds and some different speech sounds (phonemes). Since we speak by using words that we know, we do not think about the sound differences in those two words. We just say them. But when we read a word that does not come to us automatically, we now pay attention to the letters and their related sounds, and we have to learn to blend those sounds quickly into a whole word.
The first time we meet catalog in print, assuming context does not give us the word, we may have to work our way through the various sounds and patterns in the word, even saying it rapidly several times, before we can identify it as a word that holds meaning for us; for example: "The catalog gave me the information that I needed to make a decision."
A young reader might see these letters in a sentence: s-l-i-d. They represent the four phonemes in the word slid, as in "She slid the pencil across the floor." Without the ability to blend those letter/sounds quickly, the reader may not be able to identify the actual word. That's the reason that teachers work on blending so children will respond almost automatically when they see a word that does not simply pop into their heads.
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