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Saying each phoneme in a word.

Example: "What are all the sounds you hear in cat?" (/k/ /ă/ /t/)

Stretch the Word

You can talk about segmenting a word into phonemes as stretching the word.

Visual and tactile support for this concept is saying the word with hands together, palms inward, and moving them out from each other as each sound in the word is said in the order.

Putting an elastic band around the hands allows the stretch to be felt more easily. I also love using a slinky to demonstrate how to stretch out a word.

I Spy

This segmenting game is just like the traditional game of I Spy, but instead of focusing on the first sound, the child segments the clue. For example, “I spy with my little eyes something that I can see. It is a c-l-o-ck.”

Segmenting Pictures

Providing children with segmenting picture cards is a great way to teach phoneme segmentation.

Make picture cards showing phoneme dots or Elkonin boxes under each picture. The number of dots or boxes represents the number of phonemes for that spoken word.

Children segment the word as they point to each dot or box.

For some added fine motor practice, give the children some clothespegs. Ask them to repeat the segmenting but this time, they attach a peg to each box or dot.

When it comes mastery of this skill. The child will have be able know the sounds of the word and not have to get any help or struggle at all.

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Quick View 2D Shape Picture Cards with Real Life Pictures for Picture Sorts $3.00

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Browse and download products designed for early childhood teachers to successfully deliver a balanced, play-based curriculum that still meets the academic standards and benchmarks of the ACARA curriculum.

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This is when we say sounds aloud and students say the entire word. If we say /u/ /p/, students must blend and say the word "up." Again, there are different levels of difficulty within blending. You might start with 2-sound words like "up" and "go," progress to 3-sound words, and eventually incorporate more challenging sounds like digraphs, blends, and diphthongs.

Counting Cubes.

Give each student the number of cubes they will need. They will take the cubes apart as they say each sound.

You can have students blend two different ways. The first is to blend all the sounds at once into the word. This is what we usually think of with blending.

However, connecting cubes are perfect for practicing pyramid blending.

For pyramid blending, students will practice blending smaller chunks before they blend the whole word.

With the word frog, they will connect two cubes as they blend f-r fr. Then, they will blend the chunk with the next sound while connecting one more cube – fr-o fro. Finally, they will blend that larger chunk with the last sound as they add the last cube – fro-g frog.

Smashing Playdough

Honestly, is there anything play dough can’t be used for? We love smashing play dough to practice segmenting words!

You will want to tell students how many balls of play dough to make. Then, they will use their fist to smash each play dough ball as they say the sounds.

We usually use this activity when we are practicing just segmenting words, but if you want to use it as a blending activity, you can have students roll the balls together as they blend the word.

Pom Pom Blending

Pom-Poms are not usually included in your phonemic awareness toolbox

Pom-Poms to practice blending words because they are so light and easy to scoop.

Students will put out pom-poms as they segment the word. Then, they can scoop them up quickly as they blend the word.

Demonstrating mastery of blending. Students will have to be able to blend words together without help from the teacher or struggling while they are doing it.

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In this blog post: These 6 hands-on phonological and phonemic awareness activities will engage your students in practicing segmenting and blending words.
If you are a kindergarten teacher or parent, you probably know how important a strong foundation in phonemic awareness is. It's literally the foundation for success in reading and writing!

One of the hardest phonemic awareness skills for our students to master is segmenting and blending words. Even once students master segmenting and blending words with 2 or 3 sounds, they may struggle with longer words.

So what's the solution?

Practice and repetition. That doesn't have to mean boring, though. These fun phonemic awareness activities will keep your students engaged in segmenting and blending words all year long!
This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links.
What Is Segmenting and Blending Words?

To be able to decode words while reading, students need to be able to take words apart and then put them back together. Kind of like word surgeons! The faster students get at segmenting and blending words, the faster they will be able to decode words while reading.

Segmenting words means that students are taking the words apart and listening for the individual sounds. They should say the word slowly, sound by sound. For example, if the word is cat, the student will say c-a-t.

Blending words means that students are taking those individual sounds and blending them back together to make the word. For example, if I say c-a-t, the student can tell me that the word is "cat."

This is often harder that segmenting words, because students have to focus on putting the sounds together and coming up with what the word is simultaneously.

These engaging phonemic awareness activities will help your students practice both of these important skills.

Segmenting and Blending with Beads

For this phonemic awareness activity, you will need beads and pipe cleaners.

You can keep the pipe cleaner straight or bend it into a circle that students can wear as a bracelet.

Students will push the beads one-by-one to the left as they say each sound. Then, they will push all the beads at once back to the right as they blend the word together.

I like this activity because you can put more or less beads on the pipe cleaner depending on how many sounds students are working with.

You can also easily send this home to families to practice with!

Using Cubes to Blend

Connecting cubes are one of my favorite phonemic awareness tools because students can physically see the pieces (sounds) being taken apart and being put together.

Give each student the number of cubes the will need. They will take the cubes apart as they say each sound.

You can have students blend two different ways. The first is to blend all the sounds at once into the word. This is what we usually think of with blending.

However, connecting cubes are perfect for practicing pyramid blending.

For pyramid blending, students will practice blending smaller chunks before they blend the whole word.

With the word frog, they will connect two cubes as they blend f-r fr. Then, they will blend they chunk with the next sound while connecting one more cube - fr-o fro. Finally, they will blend that larger chunk with the last sound as they add the last cube - fro-g frog.

Blending with Toy Cars

Need a quick engagement booster? Add a toy car! Instant engagement.

With these segmenting and blending cards, students would usually tap each dot as they say the sounds. Then, they would trace the arrow as they blend the word back together.

Instead of having students blend with their finger, have them drive the car past as they blend the word.

Smashing Playdough

Honestly, is there anything playdough can't be used for? We love smashing playdough to practice segmenting words!

You will want to tell students how many balls of playdough to make. Then, they will use their fist to smash each playdough ball as they say the sounds.

We usually use this activity when we are practicing just segmenting words, but if you want to use it as a blending activity, you can have students roll the balls together as they blend the word.

Pushing Up Sounds

Elokin boxes are an amazing tool to practice segmenting and blending words. If you add plastic chips or counters, students can practice physically pushing up the sounds.

Phonemic awareness is working with sounds, so we don't use letters at all. However, you can use these elokin boxes during your phonics lessons too. Students can practice stretching out the words and writing the letters in the sound boxes.

This phonemic awareness activity is similar to the elokin boxes. It's from Little Readers Kindergarten.

I like these cards because students have a set place to put their counters and then they can see how they are supposed to push up the sounds.

Pom Pom Blending

I'm guessing Pom-Poms are not usually included in your phonemic awareness toolbox, but they should be!

I love using Pom-Poms to practice blending words because they are so light and easy to scoop.

Students will put out Pom-poms as they segment the word. Then, they can scoop them up quickly as they blend the word.

So simple but so fun!

I hope your students love these phonemic awareness activities to practice segmenting and blending words. Are you looking for a year of phonemic awareness lesson plans ready to go? Little Readers Kindergarten has daily phonemic awareness lesson plans your students will love!

You may also like these digital phonemic awareness Boom Cards. They are self-checking and perfect for literacy centers.

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6 Fun, Hands-On Segmenting and Blending Activities

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These fun and engaging segmenting and blending phonemic awareness activities use items you already have in your classroom!

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Syllable Awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate syllables in spoken words.

CHIN DROP:

Have your little one place their chin in their hands and say the word “dog.” They should feel their chin drop one time into their hands.

Then try it again with the word “doghouse.” They should feel their chin drop two times.

CLAP, SNAP, OR STOMP:

Have your little one clap, snap, or stomp every time they hear a syllable in a word.

Another option is to use rhythm sticks or straws.

It’s also fun to talk in a robotic voice while doing this since robots speak in syllables.

HUMMING:

Have your little one “hum” a word by saying it without opening their mouth.

The number of times they wanted to open their mouth is the number of syllables in the word.

This one is really fun for kids!

Demonstrating mastery, the child will be able use syllables without help from the teacher or students. They will be able to hear syllables and say what word or letter it is.

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Rhyme Awareness is all about identifying the onset and rime of words and determining if those words rhyme.

RHYME REPETITION:

Have your little one repeat the rhymes in a poem or song in order to draw their attention to the rhymes.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Star/Are. These words rhyme. Can you say star/are?”

RHYME RECOGNITION:

Say two words and have your little one tell you if the two words rhyme or don’t rhyme.

“Do these words rhyme? Cap/Tap.” (yes)

If they rhyme, have them clap their hands.

“Do these words rhyme? Call/Take.” (no)

If they don’t rhyme, have them cross their arms over their chest like an “X.”

Say three words out loud (2 that rhyme and 1 that doesn’t) and have your little one tell you which word doesn’t rhyme.

“Which word doesn’t belong? cat/hat/dog.” (dog)

As an alternative, you can also have them repeat the 2 words that do rhyme.

If your little one is struggling with rhyme recognition, try this hands-on way to help them hear rhymes:

1. Have them hold out their left arm straight in front of them.

2. Using their right hand, they will tap their shoulder for the onset and run their hand down their arm for the rime.

For the word “tin,” they would tap their shoulder and say /t/, then run their hand down their arm for /in/.

Then repeat with “fin.”

Show them that both times they ran their hand down their arm, they were saying “in,” which means those two words rhyme.

RHYME PRODUCTION:

Say one word and have your little one produce as many rhyming words as possible.

“Can you tell me three words that rhyme with like?” (hike, bike, Mike)

To demonstrate mastery on this skill. The student will have to be rhyme words together without help from teacher or students or hesitate when trying to come up with the words.

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What is Rhyme Awareness? | Phonological Awareness Blog Series

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In order to be strong readers, kids need strong phonological awareness skills, which includes Rhyme Awareness. Click through to read more!

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Phoneme isolation is identifying specific phonemes (or sounds) in a word.

Four Corners

A simple, last-minute phonics activity to practice phoneme isolation is this 4 corners game. All you have to do is put up four signs, each with a different letter, around the classroom. Say a word that begins with one of those sounds and have a few students find that letter. You can do one student at a time, or a group of students. It's a great way to get your students up and moving!

Beginning, Middle, or Ending Sound Picture Sort

Phonics picture sorts are my favorite way to practice phoneme isolation. You can use it with beginning, middle, or ending sounds, and later- by word family, digraph, or long vowel pattern! I like to use it in a pocket chart, but you can put it up on the board using magnets or sort it on a table if you do this in a small group activity. Students will look at the picture, isolate the phoneme, then sort the picture under the letter it starts with. You can find the beginning sound picture sort in the centers

Sort by Color

This sort-by-color activity is a great way to practice sorting without cutting and pasting. Students will use the color code at the top to color each picture by beginning or ending sound.

Demonstrating mastery of this skill. They will be able to demonstrate that a word has more than just one sound. They will be able to this without help from teachers or students.

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Which phonics skill do you teach after letter recognition and letter sounds? My answer is phoneme isolation, also known as identifying the beginning, middle, or ending sound (phoneme) in a CVC word. While this is a phonemic awareness skill, I've found great success with tying phonemic awareness into my daily phonics lessons. Here is everything you need to know to teach phoneme isolation and help your students blend CVC words faster than ever.

What is phoneme isolation?

Phoneme isolation is identifying specific phonemes (or sounds) in a word. You can practice phoneme isolation by identifying the beginning, middle, or ending sounds in a word. For example, you say the word "pat". If you ask students to identify the beginning sound in the word "pat", they would say the /p/ sound. This is one of the very first phonemic awareness skills that your students will learn!

Teaching phoneme isolation is the first step to learning how to spell. Once students can identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in a CVC word, they can segment the word and spell it, sound-by-sound. To learn more about oral segmenting, you can read this blog post here: Oral Segmentation

When do you teach phoneme isolation?

Phoneme isolation is one of the very first phonemic awareness skills you will teach. In the Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Daily Warm-Ups, you will practice identifying the initial sound in a word in Week 1. This is a skill that some of your students will learn in Pre-K, and the rest should master at the beginning of Kindergarten.

During the first 6 weeks of school, we work on letter recognition and letter sounds. Phonemic Awareness is an important piece of our phonics instruction, which is why I spend about 8 weeks focusing on phoneme isolation after they have mastered letters and sounds. Once students have finished the 8 weeks of identifying beginning, middle, and ending sounds, we move on to CVC words. Through using this approach, my students have always been able to orally blend and decode CVC words by December, and are able to spell CVC words shortly after. You can read more about my phonics curriculum which ties in phonological and phonemic awareness for well-rounded phonics instruction.

Step-by Step How to Model Phoneme Isolation

How do you introduce phoneme isolation to your students? At first, it will be a lot of modeling and cueing for your students to figure out the beginning sound of a word. To watch a video of this in action, you can find an example of the Phonemic Awareness Daily Warm-Up video here. Skip to 1:53 to watch me explain how to isolate phonemes.

Using Songs to Help Teach Phoneme Isolation

Since you will want to focus on the oral skill of phoneme isolation first, playing phonemic awareness songs is one of my go-to lesson activity ideas.

Some of my favorites are:

To find these songs and more, I have a whole YouTube playlist here, full of songs that practice identifying sounds in words. Find it here: Beginning and Ending Sounds YouTube Playlist

Phoneme Isolation Lesson Activities to Try

Once your students are able to orally isolate the beginning, middle, or ending phoneme in a word, then you can start matching the beginning sound to the letter it represents. Here are 2 of my favorite beginning sound activities to use in a whole group phonics lesson with Kindergarten students.

1. Four Corners

A simple, last-minute phonics activity to practice phoneme isolation is this 4 corners game. All you have to do is put up four signs, each with a different letter, around the classroom. Say a word that begins with one of those sounds and have a few students find that letter. You can do one student at a time, or a group of students. It's a great way to get your students up and moving!

2. Beginning, Middle, or Ending Sound Picture Sort

Phonics picture sorts are my favorite way to practice phoneme isolation. You can use it with beginning, middle, or ending sounds, and later- by word family, digraph, or long vowel pattern! I like to use it in a pocket chart, but you can put it up on the board using magnets, or sort it on a table if you do this in a small group activity. Students will look at the picture, isolate the phoneme, then sort the picture under the letter it starts with. You can find the beginning sound picture sort in the centers pack here: Beginning and Ending Phonics Centers (There is also one available as a separate resource here: Beginning Sound Picture Sort

Phoneme Isolation Center Activities to Try

1. Magnetic Letters Matching Mats

I love using manipulatives like magnetic letters in my phonics center activities! With this activity, students will match the letter to the beginning sound that the picture starts with. You don't have to use a cookie sheet, any tray will work! You can find this activity here: Beginning and Ending Sound Magnetic Matching Mats.

2. Clip Cards

One way to strengthen those fine motor skills is by using clothespins! (You can also easily use paper clips for this activity.) Clip cards are a quick and easy low-prep center activity. In this activity, students will clip the correct beginning or ending sound. You can find this activity in the Beginning and Ending Sounds Center Activities pack.

3. Sort by Color

Who doesn't love to color? This sort-by-color activity is a great way to practice sorting without cutting and pasting. Students will use the color code at the top to color each picture by beginning or ending sound. You can find this worksheet in the Beginning and Ending Sounds Phonics Worksheets here.

You can grab a free sample here:

Find all these activities included in the Kindergarten Phonics Beginning and Ending Sounds Unit

If you are teaching beginning and ending sounds and need some help planning your phonics lessons and center activities, I've done it all for you! You can find the Kindergarten Phonics Beginning and Ending Sounds Unit here. It includes everything you need to teach phoneme isolation for 4 weeks including pre-made lesson plans, phonemic awareness warm-ups, anchor charts, assessments, centers, worksheets, and more.

Once you complete the Beginning and Ending Sounds Unit, you can move on to the Short Vowels and Middle Sounds Phonics Unit.

Let me know what activities you are going to try to help your students master phoneme isolation!

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What do you teach after letter recognition in Kindergarten? Here is everything you need to teach phoneme isolation!