One classroom activity that teachers can implement in the early childhood classroom is a body part rhyming game in which students are given a spoken word describing a body part that they must find a rhyme to (i.e., "head"). The teacher may begin by using framing questions to introduce the concept of rhyming words and their similar sounds (i.e., "Does 'head' rhyme with 'red'?"). As the students develop their understanding, the teacher can ask the students to come up with their own words that rhyme with the chosen body part (Reading Rockets, 2024b).

Children in early childhood are just beginning to build foundational skills in phonemic awareness, and activities like this allow them the opportunity to play around with different sounds, increasing their awareness. To differentiate this activity for students with exceptionalities, visual supports may be provided with the word pairs to help students draw associations. Students may also require repetition during this activity, needing teachers to slow down and enunciate the sounds within the words multiple times before understanding. Another way to differentiate this activity is to choose simpler body parts to rhyme with, gradually increasing the difficulty as the children develop a better understanding of the lesson.

In this tactile segmenting activity, students will be provided with little balls of clay or play dough to squash for each phoneme they say for a given word. For example, in the word "cup," students would need to squash three little balls of play dough for /c/, /u/, and /p/.

This activity is developmentally appropriate for young learners as they are developing their fine motor skills and learning foundational reading skills. The play dough makes this activity engaging for the students and serves as a tactile tool for students to learn and retain information.

To differentiate this activity for children with exceptionalities, the teacher may swap out play dough for something easier to physically handle, such as using a pop-it to count phonemes instead. Teachers can also adjust the difficulty of this activity by giving the students words with more or less phonemes, or more complex phonemes.

This activity is an engaging way to help children develop their phonemic awareness as they are encouraged to use their own cognitive skills to search for items that fit the criteria of the box. For children with exceptionalities, this activity can be modified by providing the children a set of toys to sort through and place in the box, rather than having them search on their own. Children can also choose from a field of 5 items to place in the box. This activity encourage independent thinking on the children's part, and provides a simple assessment for parents to monitor their understanding of the activity by allowing checking the items in the box.

For this activity, students would follow the regular rules of Bingo, where each child would get a card to stamp or place a marker on as the teacher calls out the words. This game can be played multiple times and is very versatile to the teacher's and students' needs.

This activity can be adjusted by printing out a new Bingo card with words that are taught with the current phonics lesson. For example, if the class had just learned about the letter-sound correspondence for the short vowel sounds, the card may consist of words such as "cat" and "win." As students demonstrate mastery of short vowels, they may move on to long vowel sounds and the "magic 'e'" in words such as "make" and "dive." The level of difficulty for this activity is easily adapted to the level of the students.

For this activity, students will each be given a letter of the alphabet. They must practice sounding out their letter to familiarize them with the letter-sound relationship. Then, students will get the opportunity to get up and look around the classroom for other students with letters to create words.

This activity can be adjusted to fit the needs of the students by providing them with letters that are easier for them to understand, or assigning the word that they will be making so that the students would simply need to solve the sound-out puzzle!

This activity is very versatile and can be adjusted to fit the needs of each child. If the child is unfamiliar with the alphabetic principle, they can use the magnets to practice sounding out each letter, placing their mastered letters to one side of the fridge and keeping the rest for review. Depending on the child's learning goal, the parent can alter the function of these magnets to provide the best phonics practice at home!

In this activity, the teacher can read a story out loud to the class. Following the reading, students are provided with a list of vocabulary words from the story along with 1-2 of those words on flashcards. On a pocket chart, the same passage would be posted with blanks for the children to fill-in. As the teacher re-reads the story, the children can try to fill-in the blanks with the cards that they were given. The vocabulary list can be used for them to assess which word would fit the best in those blank slots.

To differentiate this activity, the passage can have more or less blanks to fill. Students may also be given a visual to support their understanding of each vocabulary word. Alternatively, the difficulty level of the text itself can also be adjusted for simpler or more complex vocabulary words.

This activity can be conducted in different ways, depending on the interests and learning styles of the class. Teacher can choose to host this game in the form of charades, where they must act out the vocabulary words. This can be useful for vocabulary words that include action words. Alternatively, this game can also be a verbal guessing game in which teacher provide verbal clues to the word that they are thinking of. For example, a clue for the word "knight" can be "a person who would wears a helmet and rides a horse." Pictionary is another version of this game, where students would draw the vocabulary words and guess which ones are presented.

This activity can be differentiated by selecting the best method of playing the game (e.g., charades, verbal clues, or Pictionary). Depending on student capabilities, some may prefer one over the other versions.

For this activity, parents can provide their children with flashcards full of different antonym pairs. The children would need to match up the pairs of antonyms to demonstrate understanding of the relationship between the words and their meanings. To differentiate this activity, parents can use flashcards with a visual icon to help their children see a representation of the word's definition. The cards may be prepared based on the child's level, with simpler words for those still learning basic vocabulary and more challenging words for advanced children.

To differentiate this activity, the teacher can try playing around with expression to encourage students to try reading it in a different way. For example, the teacher can stress different words within a sentence to change its tone ("I didn't know he took the money" vs "I didn't know he took the money"). The complexity of the text can also be adjusted to the appropriate level for the students.

To differentiate this activity for simpler tasks, the teacher can try only changing the punctuation to question marks. Rather than having a variety of ending punctuation to change the text, the teacher can ask the students to turn the statement into a question and vice versa to help them recognize that one's tone of voice goes up at the end of the question.

To differentiate the picture walk activity, teachers can direct student attention to simple illustrations or complex components of those illustrations. The questions that the teacher asks can also be more direct for beginner readers or encourage critical thinking for advanced readers.

To differentiate this activity, parents can break down the retelling of the story by asking about the main ideas. They can also use guiding questions to draw out the details from the story that the children may have left out. It is important to acknowledge that there is a difference between retelling and summarizing. Retelling is the recount of the story in the same sequence, including details from the text. Summarizing is presenting a short version of the story that emphasizes sharing main ideas in your own words. As the child improves on their retelling of the story, they can eventually begin to summarize stories using higher-level thinking to present a gist of the story.