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.
 
 
 

If you are a parent who is dedicated to raising his or her children, then chances are that their education is extremely important to you, but there is a slight problem; many of the programs out there are untested and far from guaranteed to work.

Fortunately though, there are some promising programs out there which may very well be as good as they claim to be. Not too long ago I came across the Children Learning Reading program, and the people behind it claimed to be able to even teach children who are only two or three years of age.

Naturally, I didn’t believe the claim at first, but then I took a look at the video proof they had which featured very young children reading surprisingly well. At that point, I tried to find out a bit about the makers of the program, Jim and Elena, and I learned that when they first developed their system they actually used it to teach their child to read before even turning three. These are only words however, so have a look at the actual video for yourself, located at the end of the post.

For Who was the Program Made?

Made for children between the ages of 2 and 6, the Children Learning Reading program is dedicated solely to teaching reading, although it should be taken into account that the program will not be suitable for children who haven’t learned how to speak yet.

At its base, reading is basically an activity which works by having the reader decode the letters and associate them with the proper sounds; the concept of phonemic awareness is extremely important when it comes to the development of a child’s reading skills.

If your child doesn’t have a very developed phonemic awareness then don’t sweat it as the early levels of the Children Learning Reading program are specifically designed to help children develop it.

If you aren’t exactly sure as to how important that concept is, then perhaps you would be interested in knowing that a large number of clinical studies, not to mention the National Reading Panel, have supported the idea that one of the most efficient ways of teaching children to read consists of developing their phonemic awareness.

An Examination of How the Children Learning Reading Program Works

The program is divided into two main stages, and each one of them comes with its own complete instructional book designed to guide you step-by-step through the different subjects. The first stage is directed towards helping your child develop mandatory reading skills. The second stage focuses on more advanced exercises which are designed to greatly improve your child’s reading skills.

The first stage contains 28 different lessons and it starts with the introduction to different upper-case alphabet letters one by one, teaching the child which sounds correspond to which letters.

Subsequently, they are introduced to very simple and basic words; naturally, as the lessons progress the words become more and more complicated, eventually forming full sentences and even stories at some point. Needless to say, by the time the first stage of the program is completed your child will some impressive reading abilities as he or she will be able to read simple stories and will even have an understanding as to how words can rhyme together.

The second stage consists of 22 lessons and was mentioned earlier, the lessons taught become more complex. Apart from teaching your child much more advanced words, sentences, stories and rhymes, the second stage also aims to teach how two letters can be combined to form a single sound, also referred to as digraphs.

What Makes the Program Different

What is it that makes the Child Reading Learning program different from the others out there? Well for starters it doesn’t require for the child to memorize phonemic rules, a concept which was implemented due to the idea that toddlers and very small children don’t take well to boring activities which have them memorize boring rules; after all, the primary goal here is to teach them to read better.

Another interesting aspect of this program is the fact that while there are quite a lot of lessons, they are each very short and dedicated to teaching one specific concept; a lesson shouldn’t take more than 10 or 15 minutes to complete. This works perfectly as small children tend to have a very short attention span and will learn much more from short and easy lessons which don’t require too much time or effort.

All in all, the Children Learning Reading program takes your child in just 12 short weeks from barely being able to understand letters to reading short children’s tales. Considering the existing proof and the sound plan which this program follows, it is more than reasonable to believe that this program actually delivers as promised, and as such I strongly recommend you consider using it to teach your child to read.

If you would like to learn more about the program, you can do by clicking the following link
 

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.