Phonemic awareness activities help children learn to distinguish individual sounds, or phonemes, within words. This awareness is a prerequisite skill before children can learn to associate sounds with letters and manipulate sounds to blend letters during reading.

How can phonemic awareness be taught? A few of the things practiced in Kindergarten are learning to:

· Recognize rhyme and alliteration

· Orally blend word parts

· Clap syllables in words

· Count sounds in words

· Orally segment words

Here are some fun games and activities you can do with your child at home:

Rhyme Hunt: Tell your child that you are going on a rhyme hunt and ask him/her to find something in the room that rhymes with a given word. For example, clock/sock, bear/chair

Beanbag Pass: Sit across from your child and pass a beanbag back and forth. You start by choosing a word to rhyme with (for example, cat) then pass the beanbag to your child. They produce a word that rhymes with cat. Continue this game until you both cannot think of any more rhyming words.

Put It Together: In this activity you will say a word in parts. You can ask your child to orally blend the word parts and say the word as a whole. For example, you can say /m/a/p/. Your child should then blend the sounds together to say “map”. To add to the playfulness of this activity, use a puppet!

Guess It!: Orally segment the name of an animal. Your child must then guess the animal’s identity. For example, you would say, “I’m thinking of an animal. It’s a p/ig. What animal am I thinking of?” Your child can then blend the sounds together to say, “Pig!”

Swap a Letter: Write a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant word such as “hat” or “mop” on a piece of paper and show it your child. Help them to sound, blend, and identify it. Then replace one letter of the spelled word. Ask your child to determine what the new word is. This helps with awareness that every letter in a word matters.

Beginning Sound I Spy: Explain how to play “I Spy” to your child. Say, “I spy something with my little eye that begins with /s/. Ask that your child look around the room to find the object(s) that begin with that sound. You can play this with any letter. If your child is having difficulty with a certain letter, you can target that letter and sound.

Syllable Clapping: Help your child to clap out how many syllables are in his/her first or last name. Continue to play with other words such as objects around the house, favorite foods, or favorite toys. As a variation of this, you can have your child place his/her hand directly under his/her jaw. Say the word and count how many times he/she can feel the jaw drop.

Reading!!!

Reading nursery rhymes, poems, and rhyming books are also wonderful for building phonemic awareness! You can begin by pointing out the rhyming words to your child then have him/her take over and point out the rhyming words.

Some ideas for rhyming books are:

Come Rhyme With Me! – Hans Wilhelm

Green Eggs and Ham – Dr. Seuss

How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? – Jane Yolen & Mark Teague

Animal Strike at the Zoo – Karma Wilson

What Will I Do If I Can’t Tie My Shoe? – Heidi Kilgras

Mice Squeak, We Speak – Tomie DePaola

The Itsy Bitsy Spider – Iza Trapani