Phonemic & Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness is when a child can associate letter sounds with print. Phonological awareness plays a major role in your child's reading success. Below are resources that will help build your child's phonological awareness. 

Games

Listening Games: To sharpen the child’s ability to attend selectively to sounds. 

• Practice, from a familiar nursery rhyme, detecting what is said out of order. For example, Humpty Dumpty wall on a sat, or swap the word parts as in one, two, shuckle my boo. Also, can the child detect that the story order is incorrect, as in mixing up the order in the Three Little Pigs? If he/she can ~ that is being a good listening detective!

• Have the child listen to and participate in storytelling, listen to read alouds, follow oral directions, and sequence events.

• Identify animals by the sounds they make.

Rhyming: To use rhyme to introduce the child to the sounds in words. 

• Round Robin Game: I’m going on a trip and I’m taking a pet, net, jet, etc. Rhyming words need to be given by the child.

• Rhyme Hunt: I see something in this room that rhymes with rock. Continue in this manner.

• Say two words, and the child gives thumbs up/thumbs down if the words rhyme or not.

• Ask What rhymes with top and starts with /h/? What rhymes with rack and starts with /t/? Continue with these riddles.

• Read lots of Mother Goose rhymes to your child. Teach your child to use meaning and meter to notice and predict rhyming words

• Have the child sit with friends/family in a circle with fists up as in One Potato, Two Potato. As a group, say a nursery rhyme, with fists being tapped one at a time in a circle. If the child’s fist is the rhyming word, the fist goes behind back. Continue in this manner.

Word sentences: To develop the child’s awareness that language is made up of strings of words.

• Use alliteration in silly sentences, such as six silly snakes sat soaking up some sun. Ask what sound was heard most often. Big bears bake bread. etc. Jiggle, Joggle, Jee by Laura Richards and Chicky Chicky Chook Chook by Cathy MacLennan are two books focusing on alliteration that preschoolers enjoy.

• Round Robin Game: I’m going on a trip and I’m taking a pen, pencil, peanut, parrot. . . . Continue this game using various letters.

Sources:

Adams, Marilyn Jager. Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. Brookes Publishing: Baltimore, 1998.

Araujo, Judith E., M.Ed., CAGS. "Phonemic Awareness for PreK, K, and 1." Mrs. Judy Araujo, Reading Specialist. N.p., 5 Sept. 2012. Web. <http://www.mrsjudyaraujo.com/phonemic-awareness-for-prek-k-and-1/>.