Beginning Phonological Awareness Activities

Here are ready to go tasks for phonological awareness. The first few would be appropriate for a 3 or 4 year old, but some of the more challenging ones are designed for a Kindergartener or 1st Grader. Remember, your child learns at his or her own pace. Start with the first tasks on this site and slowly work up to the more challenging ones!

Parent: "How many words are in this sentence?"

• The dog is brown.
• I like to run.
• Can we play?
• Soccer is fun!
• Joey had pizza for dinner.

Consider the errors! If your child is giving answers much too high, maybe they are counting the syllables!

Parent: "Put these parts of a word together to make a real word!" Be sure to leave time between the word parts. If you say it too quickly, it just sounds like the whole word!

• chalk......board
• blue.......bird
• side........walk

Parent: "I am going to say a word! Can you tell me the parts in the word?"

• "baseball" Child responds - "base....ball"
• "flower" Child responds - "flow.....er"
• "firework" Child responds - "fire....work"

You'll notice that most of these words are compound words, or two smaller words combined to form a larger one, such as firework (fire + work). Some, like flower, are not. It's helpful to use compound words when children have difficulty with this task because the parts are real words that a child will recognize. Here are more compound words you can use for either of the tasks above.

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