Letters and Sounds

Click here to return to Resources for Home.

Phonemic Awareness refers to the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in words. It includes letter sounds, rhyming, syllables and other skills. Having strong phonemic awareness skills is a predictor of future success in reading. We use the "Heggerty" program to practice these skill daily. Click here to learn more about this program.

Knowing the letters and sounds of the alphabet is probably the most important predictor of future success in reading. Below are some links to help practice this skill. (I have also listed no-tech options.)

Abcmouse letter songs - a classroom favorite!

Practice all letter names and sounds using these links:

Make letter flashcards (upper and lower case) - mix them up and see if you know the letters out of order. Can you say the letter sound also? Can you think of something that starts with that letter?

Play "I spy" around the house - "I spy something that starts with an "s" in the kitchen... (sink)

Sing our "best abc song" "The a says a-a-a-a-a-a, the b says b-b-b-b-b.

Play "I spy"...I spy something in the kitchen that rhymes with pink...(sink)

Play "Silly Rhymes" - make up a silly rhyme for something and have your child think of the real word. (Ex: "zable" - table)

Play "Thumbs up/Thumbs down" - say two words, if they rhyme your child puts thumb up, if they don't rhyme your child puts thumb down.

Say a word and have your child say words that rhyme with that word.

Click here to go to the link for "Really Great Reading" letter tiles

You can select "touch input" if you are using a tablet, or "mouse input" if you are using a computer.

Once you click on that, you will see a screen with letter tiles across the top. Your child can drag these tiles down to the green area to spell words. You can help by dragging a colored box down for each sound in the word, and then your child can find the correct letter tile for each sound in the word.

Ex: for the word "cat", you would put three boxes one for the /c/ sound, one for the /a/ sound and one for the /t/ sound.

Your child would drag down the letters c-a-t to the boxes to spell the word.