Look, I’m a busy mom working full time as a teacher with a 1 and 3-year-old at home. I don’t have much time to devote extra time to their education on a daily basis. That’s why I’m devoted to helping other parents (like you) learn how to teach your children the basics of literacy with simple steps you can do virtually anywhere!
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What is Phonemic Awareness?
If you are simply looking for more information on what phonemic awareness is, you can check out the post I already did, “What is Phonemic Awareness and How do I teach it?” That will give you a great basis of why phonemic awareness is so important and a key element to learning to read (and write).
Phonemic awareness is the ability to isolate sounds and spoken language. Remember that these are sounds that can be heard and activities that they can be completed completely in the dark it’s just your child’s ability to hear different sounds within spoken words.
The research is coming out that the more you make phonemic awareness a priority the better for our young learners. Phonemic Awareness is an early predictor of good readers and good spellers as they work through life. Today we’re going to discuss activities that you can do starting today to help boost your toddler or preschooler phonemic awareness skills.
The nice thing about teaching phonemic awareness is that you don’t really need to go out of your way to do it. You can do it all the time in spoken language around your home.
Some Ways that Preschoolers can Practice Phonemic Awareness are:
1. Rhyming (Words that Sound the Same at the End):
Rhyming is an important beginning skill for children because it helps them learn to hear how words sound similar. When we can identify words that sound the same at the end it will help support their ability to find patterns in words. In turn, this will help them with spelling and reading later in life.
As a primary teacher, I teach rhyming through activities, games (including spoken word games), and pictures. Since I’m a busy mom I teach rhyming words to my toddler and preschooler by using books, words, and simple rhymes throughout our day.
Books:
I love using Dr. Suess books for teaching rhyming words including:
- Skunk in my Bunk By Christopher Cerf
- Hop on Pop By Dr. Suess
- Jiggle Wiggle Prance By Sally Noll
Nursery Rhymes:
I love the site: All Nursery Rhymes to find new nursery rhymes and all the lyrics! Nursery rhymes are a great tool to help teach your children rhyming. Learning nursery rhymes also helps support memory and reading comprehension.
Word Games:
I love doing “word games” with my kids! They are still little so I can call anything a “game” and they are on board.
My 3-year-old is very into basketball right now so when I shoot I’ll say a word like “dog” then if I make it I get to shoot again. This time I’ll say a word that rhymes like “frog” so I would say “dog, frog”. If I miss the shot its his turn and I have him come up with rhyming words.
At first he’ll use a lot of the same words or examples that I do but over time he’ll catch on to his own words. Especially if I make it a point while we are reading to give him more examples.
2. Isolating Sounds in Words:
This is taking a word apart and saying the sounds instead of the word or letter names. So I might say “Pass me the /B/ /A/ /T/.”. I leave it up to him to figure out that I’m asking him to pass me the bat. I might say “put the /f/ /or/ /k/ on the table”.
When we isolate the sounds for our children it forces them to hear all of the sounds that are used to make up the word. This is directly enforcing the idea that words are made up of different sounds (thus strengthening their phonemic awareness).
3. Ask About the Sounds they Heard:
Phonemic awareness is all about hearing sounds in words. For our very young toddlers its so important that they can hear and identify different sounds.
This will initially start as identifying sounds of emergency vehicles, appliances starting or running in your home, or sounds that animals make. Their ability to hear and identify different sounds is great practice for phonemic awareness as they continue through their development.
4. Break Words into Syllables:
Breaking words into syllables is great practice for phonemic awareness. Children will need to use this skill as they continue to learn reading and writing skills.
Syllables are broken up by words based on how many vowels are in the word. For example the word snow only has 1 syllable because the “ow” makes the long o sound in that word. However the word snowing has 2 syllables snow/ing. The ing takes on it’s own syllable because of the i within the word.
I might say to my son or student (at school) “Do you see it is snow/ing out/side?”. This gives them an opportunity to correctly hear how different words are broken up when they aren’t under any pressure to preform.
Sometimes it creates a discussion about why I said it like that but other times they answer me and go on. Either way is fine, as long as they understood the phrase I asked.
Additional Phonemic Awareness Activities for Preschoolers:
1. ABC Books
Books that show multiple items that all start with the same letter on a page are wonderful for teaching young children phonemic awareness. They give children an opportunity to hear the same sound receptively (car, cookie, cat, cake, cup, candle, cabinet, etc.)
This will continue to help support the idea of isolating sounds including beginning sounds.
2. Kahn Academy
Kahn academy kids is an awesome FREE application for your iPad (or phone) that allows kids to practice phonemic awareness, letter identification, counting, storytelling, vocabulary, and a whole slew of other skills.
I love this app and the fact that it tailors itself to your child’s needs is even better!
3. Poems
Poems are great for getting those sounds, rhymes, and provide phonemic awareness activities for preschoolers. I linked some great options below.
- Ook the Book and Other Silly Rhymes By Lissa Rovetch
- Dirt on My Shirt By Jeff Foxworthy
I hope this is informative and supportive as you are looking to continue to teach early literacy skills to young children.
As always please share this with an educator or parent looking to support their child at home!
Comment down below and let me know what you learned or took away from this article!
Love, Ashley E
One Response
I love your information to help people teach reading by various ways, games, reading to children, talking while doing chores and even while playing with them.