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Resource to assist families with developing the component at home

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Resource to assist families with developing the component at home

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8 Easy Phonemic Awareness Activities - Begin Learning

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Phonemic awareness activities help kids develop an essential core reading skill. Get 8 easy ones from Begin's early learning experts!

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One developmentally appropriate classroom activity to support development of phonemic awareness.

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One developmentally appropriate classroom activity to support development of phonemic awareness.

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A simple activity is using playdough and picture cards. Place a picture card in front of your students and ask them what they see – it may be a bat. Ask them, how many sounds can you hear in bat? Then have them create three playdough balls. Have them squash the balls as the segment the word /b/ /a/ /t/. Then have them roll those ‘squashed’ balls together to blend the phonemes together again.

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One developmentally appropriate classroom activity to support development of fluency.

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One developmentally appropriate classroom activity to support development of fluency.

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Students take turns reading aloud. Teacher goes first to provide a model of what good fluent reading sounds like.

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One developmentally appropriate classroom activity to support the development of phonics.

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One developmentally appropriate classroom activity to support the development of phonics.

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Rhyme Time, this activity encourages students to create and recite rhymes

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Resources to assist families with developing phonics at home.

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Resources to assist families with developing phonics at home.

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Help your child strengthen their literacy skills at any stage of development.

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Resource to assist families with developing phonics at home.

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Resource to assist families with developing phonics at home.

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Many parents want to support their children with reading. When kids are learning to read, especially in Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, they need plenty of opportunities to practice phonics skills. Practicing phonics skills at home can support what's happening in the classroom and lead to success with reading. So in this article, we're sharing 7 fun phonics activities for parents to do at home!

Before we get into the actual activities, it's important to consider where to start. Your child's teacher or school may provide you with information about what skill(s) they are working on, based upon the reading or phonics program they are using. And if they don't already share that information with you, you can always ask!

If that information is not available for some reason, check out our free phonics scope and sequence pdf and make an educated guess about what skills your child should be working on.

Let's dive into these fun activities!

When kids are learning a phonics skill (i.e. the sound for the letter m, or the digraph ch), it's important for them to see examples of the skill being used in real words and books. Scavenger hunts are a fun way to accomplish this!

If your child is learning the alphabet, for example, choose a letter and have them look in books, magazines - or on any type of print you might have in your home. You can also do this in the car; they can search for the letter on billboards and signs!

If your child is reading and working on more complex patterns like the vowel team "ea," you can do the scavenger hunt as described above, but your child will look for whole words with that pattern. You can also have them look for words with the phonics pattern in the books that they're reading and/or the books you read aloud to them.

To increase the fun, try giving them a goal number of letters or words to find - make it a little challenging, but still attainable! They can use a piece of paper to draw a checkmark every time they find an example, or even write the word that contains the example.
Activity #2: Modified Phonics Board Games
If you have any board games at home, change the directions slightly! Every time a player takes a turn, they move their piece (and follow any directions on the game) AND they have to pull a card from a stack.
Activity #3: Fun Phonics Writing Activity #4: "What's the Sound?" Phonics Activity
The stack of cards would be created by you, and the cards would contain alphabet letters (they can say the letter name and/or sound) OR words that match the skill you want to work on (they would read the word out loud).

Practicing writing letters and words is an important part of phonics! You can make it fun by having students paint, write in shaving cream spread thinly on a table, trace in sand - or use any other type of material that sounds fun. After they've written a letter or word, have them tell you the letter sound or read the word to you.
Activity #5: At-Home Phonics Treasure Hunt
For this activity, grab a few of your child's toys and some other small objects around the house. Place them on the table. Have your child select one object at a time and tell you the first sound (and perhaps letter) in the word.
Activity #6: Word Building with Magnetic Letters
If this is easy for your child (it may be easy for first grade and up), have them tell you the last sound or the vowel sound(s) instead!

For this game, you'll need some index cards with alphabet letters or words written on them. Hide the index cards around your home. Tell your child how many cards they have to find. When your child finds a card, they have to say the letter sound OR read the word aloud.
Activity #7: Go To The Library!
Do you have a magnetic refrigerator, cabinet, or cookie sheet in your home? If so, have your child use magnetic letters to practice building words! Just like with the other activities, you'll want to choose words that have a phonics pattern the child is learning.

Another activity you can have them do with magnetic letters: make separate groups of consonants and vowels.

This one technically isn't done at home - but it's an important one! While it's valuable to have students read individual words, it's also important that they practice reading complete texts (when they are able to do so). So head to your local library!

If you need guidance selecting appropriate books for your child (whether it's for the child to read or for you to read to them), don't hesitate to ask the librarian or even your child's teacher. They will be happy to help you support your child with their reading!

So there you have it - 7 phonics activities for parents to do at home, and they're lots of fun, too! We hope you enjoy these activities!

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7 Fun, Free Phonics Activities for Parents to Do at Home

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Many parents want to support their children with reading. When kids are learning to read, especially in Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, they need plenty of opportunities to practice phonics skills. Practicing phonics skills at home can support what's happening in the classroom and lead to success with reading.

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Resource to assist families with developing fluency at home.

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Resource to assist families with developing fluency at home.

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Parent tips for easy reading and writing activities to do with your child. Part of our Growing Readers series.

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Resource to assist families with developing fluency at home.

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Resource to assist families with developing fluency at home.

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6 Ways to Get Families Engaged in Reading Fluency Growth -- THE Journal

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Research shows that family engagement is vital to improving student outcomes, so here are six ways educators can strengthen the school-to-family connection by helping caregivers emphasize reading fluency — with actionable ideas for families to help their students develop stronger fluency skills at home.

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Resource to assist families with developing phonemic awareness at home.

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Resource to assist families with developing phonemic awareness at home.

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That's a complicated sounding term, but it's meaning is simple: the ability to hear, recognize, and play with the sounds in spoken language. Phonological awareness is really a group of skills that include a child's ability to:

Identify words that rhyme

Count the number of syllables in a name

Recognize alliteration (words with the same beginning sound)

Segment (break) a sentence into words

Identify the syllables in a word

The most sophisticated phonological awareness skill (and the last to develop) is called phonemic awareness - the ability to hear, recognize, and play with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. When playing with the sounds in word, children learn to:

Blend individual sounds to make a word

Stretch out a word into its individual sounds

Swap in a different sound to the beginning, middle, or end of a word to make a new word

Strong phonemic awareness is one of the strongest predictors of later reading success. Children who struggle with reading, including kids with dyslexia, often have trouble with phonemic awareness, but with the right kind of instruction they can be successful. Learn some of the warning signs for dyslexia in this article, Clues to Dyslexia in Early Childhood.

Parents can make a big difference in helping their children become readers by practicing these pre-reading oral skills at home. Try some of the simple rhyming and word sound games described here.

Try these speech sound activities at home

Rhyme time

"I am thinking of an animal that rhymes with big. What's the animal?" Answer: pig. What else rhymes with big? ( dig, fig, wig)

Road trip rhymes

While you're out driving in the car, spot something out the window and ask your child, "what rhymes with tree or car or shop?" Then switch roles and have your child spot something and ask you for a rhyme. This can turn into a game of nonsense rhymes ("What rhymes with tree stump?") but that's great for practicing sounds, too!

Word families

Word families are sets of words that rhyme. Start to build your family by giving your child the first word, for example, cat. Then ask your child to name all the "kids" in the cat family, such as: bat, fat, sat, rat, pat, mat, hat, flat. This will help your child hear patterns in words.

Silly tongue twisters

Sing songs and say silly tongue twisters. These help your child become sensitive to the sounds in words.

Tongue ticklers

Alliteration or "tongue ticklers" - where the sound you're focusing on is repeated over and over again - can be a fun way to provide practice with a speech sound. Try these:

For M: Miss Mouse makes marvelous meatballs!

For S: Silly Sally sings songs about snakes and snails.

For F: Freddy finds fireflies with a flashlight.

Syllable shopping

While at the grocery store, have your child tell you the syllables in different food names. Have them hold up a finger for each word part. Eggplant = egg-plant, two syllables. Pineapple = pine-ap-ple, three syllables. Show your child the sign for each and ask her to say the word.

"I spy" first sounds

Practice beginning sounds with this simple "I spy" game at home, on a walk, or at the grocery store. Choose words with distinctive, easy-to-hear beginning sounds. For example, if you're in the bathroom you can say, "I spy something red that starts with the "s" ssss sound ( soap)."

Sound scavenger hunt

Choose a letter sound, then have your child find things around your house that start with the same sound. "Can you find something in our house that starts with the letter "p" pppppp sound? Picture, pencil, pear "

Which letter sounds do I teach first?

Reading expert Linda Farrell recommends that you begin with teaching the letter names, and then focus on the letter sounds that are closest to their letter names (such as /v/). And here's a great tip for teaching the trickier letter name-letter sound combinations - use arm motions. In this video, Linda demonstrates motions for /x/ and /y/. (From our video series Reading SOS: Expert Answers to Family Questions About Reading.)

Sound games

Practice blending sounds into words. Ask "Can you guess what this word is? m - o - p." Hold each sound longer than normal.

First sounds

When you're reading together with your child, pick a word from the book and say it with emphasis on the first sound. Pick another word and compare them. "Zzz-zookeeper and rrr-rhinoceros. Can you hear what sound zzz-zookeeper starts with? Is it the same as rrr-rhinoceros?

Jump, skip, hop!

Create simple picture cards that you draw or cut out of magazines. Have your child, identify what's in the picture, and then break that word into its individual sounds. For example dog is d-o-g, three sounds (phonemes). Three sounds? You and your child do three jumping jacks, skips, or hops (followed by a high-five). You can also do this game outdoors without the cards, just call out simple words for your child.

Snail talk

Tell your child you're going to communicate in "snail talk" and they need to figure out what you're saying. Take a simple word and stretch it out very slowly (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/), then ask your child to tell you the word. Switch roles and have your child stretch out a word for you.

"I spy" blending

Here's an easy phoneme blending game you can play while talking a walk. For blending, you can say, "I see a sign that says s-t-o-p" Then your child has to blend the sounds to guess your word - stop. (Remember to say only the sounds in the word - not the letters.) Keep the words short, moving from two to three to four sounds depending on your child's skill level.

Sound counting

Using LEGO bricks, beads, or pennies, say a word and have your child show you how many sounds the word makes. For example, top = t-o-p = three sounds, so your child would place three objects in a row. Then have them tap each object as they say the sound. Remember, your child is just showing you the sounds they hear. So the word bike would be = b-i-k (silent e) = only three sounds.

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Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Activities for Your Kindergartener

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Phonological and phonemic awareness are important pre-reading skills, related to the ability to hear, identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language - including rhymes, syllables, and the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children with strong phonological awareness skills are ready to become readers.

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Phonemic awareness is defined as the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words (Marshall, 2023).

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Phonics is defined as a method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system.

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Fluency is defined as reading expressively with accuracy and at a good pace (NSW Department of Education, 2020).

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Classroom resources to support children in becoming fluent readers.

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Marshall, J. (2023, August 2). What Is Phonemic Awareness? A Guide for Educators and Families. We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-phonemic-awareness/

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Marshall, J. (2023, August 2). What Is Phonemic Awareness? A Guide for Educators and Families. We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-phonemic-awareness/

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Marshall, J. (2023, August 2). What Is Phonemic Awareness? A Guide for Educators and Families. We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-phonemic-awareness/

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Developmentally Appropriate Classroom Activity to Support Development of Vocabulary

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Developmentally Appropriate Classroom Activity to Support Development of Vocabulary

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Creating a word all is an excellent way to help kindergarten students learn new words and remember them. Hang a large poster board on the wall and write new words on it as they are introduced.

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Developmentally Appropriate Classroom Activity to Support Development of Comprehension.

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Developmentally Appropriate Classroom Activity to Support Development of Comprehension.

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Storytelling is a great way to support the development of comprehension in kindergarten. This can be done by the teacher telling a short story and then asking the students to retell the story back in their own words.

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Vocabulary at Home

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Vocabulary at Home

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TAKE-HOME STRATEGY Supporting Vocabulary at Home What It’s About Vocabulary means the words we understand or use. Children’s vocabularies expand quickly as they learn new words through their daily interactions and play. It’s important to know that young children typically know or understand more words than they say. You can support this skill by introducing […]

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Vocabulary at Home

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Vocabulary at Home

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8 Creative Ideas to Help Your Child Learn New Words

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How can you expose your child to new words?

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Comprehension at Home

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Comprehension at Home

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10 Ways to Support Your Child's Literacy at Home

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Supporting your child's literacy activities at home can help develop reading ability, comprehension, and language skills and improve your child's interest in reading, attitude toward reading, and focus.

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Comprehension at Home

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Resources to Assist Families with Developing Comprehension at Home

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Parent tips for easy reading and writing activities to do with your child. Part of our Growing Readers series.

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A list or group of words used in a particular language.

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The action or capability of understanding something.

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Platforms like Reading Eggs, Starfall, and ABCmouse offer a wide range of materials to support reading development. These include reading apps, websites, videos, and games.

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Libraries provide a wealth of resources, including books, magazines, educational videos, and games. They also host story time events and other reading-based activities.

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Games like "Can You Find the Uppercase Letter A?" and "Can You Find the Lowercase Letter a?" help develop letter identification skills through fun and engaging activities.