Phonemic awareness is without a doubt one of the most important skills your children need to develop before they start reading, and so it is important that you step up and take on the responsibility of working with your child and teaching them all the need to learn.

Indeed, there are many methods that can be used to teach children the concept of phonemic awareness, and you are free to use whichever ones you like. However, I’d urge you to consider adding at least one (or perhaps even many?) of the following phonemic awareness strategies.

Make the Connection with Letters

While it may be a bit counterintuitive, there are various studies that have demonstrated that children are capable of learning the concept of phonemic awareness better when the sounds they are taught are explicitly associated with certain letters.

This won’t take up much of your time, and not only will it help your child become more phonemically aware faster, but it will also kick-start the process of learning how to read, since they will already be making associations between the spoken and the written language.

Customize your Approach

While it is true that in general most children share the same method of thinking, each child has a different level of phonemic awareness; while some may have a very easy time learning others could very well be struggling with the concept of speaking. It is important that you individualize (or customize) if you will the difficulty and intensity of your sessions depending on the kind of abilities your child has.

Clapping the Syllables into Memory

When you are teaching children the concept that words are made up from different groups of sounds that are separated as syllables, it would be good to have them clap for each syllable.

The simple gesture of clapping (or tapping their fingers if that’s what you prefer) will help them to actually remember what syllables make up a word, and what’s more, it will make it easier for them to separate by syllables the words they haven’ t worked on yet.

Alternative Words

Children need to be taught that phonemes play a great role when it comes to determining the meaning of a word, and thus, of a sentence. The best way to do that would be to engage in an exercise where you and your child try to make small substitutions to songs, rhymes, or stories that you both know.

When your child sees that changing phonemes changes the meaning of the song, he or she will, simply put, develop a better phonemic awareness.

Visual Flashcards

Humans are visual creatures, and the exact same thing can be said of kids. Using picture flashcards are the perfect tool for developing your children’s phonemic awareness, especially if you use images that are already familiar to them.

You can ask, for instance, your child to name the image that appears on the card, and then cut it down in syllables. The whole concept of using a picture won’t only help your child remember the lessons better, but the exercise itself will also contribute to showing them that words are made up different sounds and phonemes that are independent from one another.

And so, these are a few of the phonemic awareness strategies that exist out there, and while there are certainly more for you to learn about, I suggest you take the time to implement at least a couple of them into your routine to see how it goes.

I’m going to leave you with one final piece of advice: don’t let the learning stop at school. If you truly want your child to flourish intellectually, you will need to turn your home into an environment fit for learning, one in which you regularly work with them (without being an overly-concerned helicopter parent), one where they can progress.
 
 

While many see the internet as a source of entertainment, there is no doubt about the fact that it can be used as a great source of education, and most recently, even babysitting. As it happens, there are actually various educational games anyone can play online for free designed for preschool children.

While it goes without saying that you shouldn’t rely on these games as educational tools by themselves, they do provide a good option for teaching your children how to pass the time in a productive and self-helping manner. In any case, here is a look at a few free online phonemic awareness games for preschool children designed to improve many of their academic skills.

The Wacona Typing Game

In a world where computers are occupying an increasingly big position in daily life, it is important to teach your children how to use them in a skillful manner, and that starts with the improvement of their typing skills.

Wacona is a very simple game that not only challenges children to type as fast and mistake-free as they can, but also gives them all the techniques they need in order to succeed.

 
CLICK HERE to visit The Wacona Typing Game website

Barney’s Shape Game

While it certainly isn’t reading, shape identification is just as important, introducing children not only to the most basic of mathematics, but also helping them become distinguish between elements with greater ease.

In any case, this game, starring Barney the Dinosaur, simply revolves around children finding the shape displayed on the left in a simple picture. It’s fun and can be a tad challenging for younger kids.
 
CLICK HERE to visit Barney’s Shape website

Dora the Explorer

Very few kids out there aren’t acquainted with Dora the Explorer, who may very well be the most popular teaching icon for children.

As you can guess, the internet is filled to the brim with games featuring her, with most, if not all of them having something educational to give to those who play them.

I’m afraid I cannot recommend one single game out of the bunch, but I will provide you with a link to a website where you can play a bunch of her games.
 
CLICK HERE to visit Dora the Explorer website

Fisher Price Preschool Games

I don’t think I need to make any introductions to Fisher Price, one of the most recognized children’s brands around the world. As it happens, they have a game section on their website where one can find a wide range of educational games for preschoolers, ranging from ones teaching the importance of eating healthy all the way to a simplified piano simulator and even a track builder.

All in all, they have a ton of games that require constructive thinking and they are a good way for your child to spend a bit of his or her time.
 
CLICK HERE to visit Fisher Price website

Bobinogs Games

Finally, there are Bobinogs games, and for those who do not know, they are a British brand that specifically focuses on online gaming, or at least a big part of it does.

Their games are based around all the basic academic subjects one could find in school, including math, science, music, English, and more. Their games are very cute, they require the children to think, and they are very eye-catching.
 
 
CLICK HERE to visit Bobinogs Games website
 
With certainly not being any shortage of educational online games for children of a preschool level you should have little to no trouble keeping your kid occupied for an hour or two should you require that. However, it must once again be stressed that these games are no substitute for proper education… they should be seen as free and beneficial babysitting devices.
 
 
 

While in the past a child’s education only really started in kindergarten, these days preschool teachers have a more important job than before, with one of their responsibilities being to make children phonemically aware before they go on with their education where they will be expected to enter with some basic understandings of sound.

Long story short, the earlier you start developing your child’s phonemic awareness abilities, the better, and here are some phonemic awareness activities designed for pre-school level children as a teacher.

A Name Game

One of the many things out there which captivates children is hearing their name, so you can use that to your advantage and make an exercise in which you teach your students the concept of rhyming with the use of names.

This would work by having you memorize all of your students’ names, after which you can ask your whole class to find a name that rhymes with some kind of basic word, such as “Sam” and “jam” or “Greg” and “egg”.

Teaching Syllables

Teaching the concept of syllables to young children is indeed quite important… after all, they need to know how a word is made and how to divide it should part of it need to be transported to the next line.

In any case, a simple exercise would consist of asking the children to clap every time they hear a syllable in a word that you are dissecting in front of everyone. At first, you can start clapping along with them to show how it’s done, but after they should be the ones doing the clapping on their own.

Matching Sounds

This activity requires a bit of material preparation beforehand. You need to cut up a card for each one of your students, with a picture and a sound on it. For each card there needs to be a second one with the exact same picture and sound.

Once you have distributed the cards around the room, turn on some music or give a signal, and have the children walk around the room looking for the person with the same card as theirs.

Sound Recognition

Finally, this last activity is quite simple, not to mention that children generally love it as it requires a certain type of physical movement. In any case, it starts off as you give the children a sound they need to listen for. It can be “or”, “is”, “as”, “ton”… literally any kind of sound.

Once you have made it clear which sound they need to look out for, you say a word, and if the children think the sound is at the beginning, they need to touch their heads. If it’s at the end, they need to touch their toes.

Needless to say, there are many more phonemic awareness activities you can make your students go through, although I recommend you start with these and see where you want to go from there. Regardless of what you do, be sure not to overwork your students and burden them with advanced concepts; keep the atmosphere light-hearted and don’t knock the joy of learning out of those kids.
 
 
 

Hello! I’m guessing that if you landed on this page on purpose then you are looking to find out more about the teaching method used in the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read what led to its development. Well, as you most likely already read, the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program uses a method of teaching referred to as phonics which hinges on developing the reader’s phonemic awareness.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

There have been extensive scientific studies about the subject and it would take me a good deal of pages to communicate all the findings, so I’ll just cut right to the chase. As you probably know, the language we speak is made up of basic sounds referred to as phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, interpret and manipulate English phonemes.

How the Phonics Method of Teaching Works

To make a long story short the phonics system aims to allow beginning readers to decode and identify written words by sounding them out, which in the system’s terms is referred to as blending sound spelling patterns.

Ideally, as the child builds up their phonemic awareness they begin to be better manipulators of the English language, recognizing the certain words rhyme or that others share a similar structure for example. In other words, it will give them a much better grasp of how the language works and all the ways in which it can be manipulated.

The Benefits of a Developed Phonemic Awareness

Apart from making your child into a better reader, developing their phonemic awareness will make school much easier for them as they will write freely with more creativity and confidence. In addition to that, it will also increase his or her speech fluency as well as their ability to understand any types of text.

How the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Integrates the Phonics Learning Method

As you probably are already aware of it, the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program has a pre-kindergarten level that was developed based on scientific studies which support the importance of phonemic awareness. More precisely, the first two levels of the program contain a lot of content based on the Phonics teaching system.

If you would like to learn more about the Hooked on Phonics system itself, then you can take a look at my Hooked on Phonics Review.