Archive for the ‘Phonemic Awareness’ Category

Some of the keys to learning to read are noticing sounds in words (developing phonemic awareness), recognizing letters of the alphabet and understanding words.

Next time you’re in the car with your preschool or kindergarten child, spend a few minutes talking about sounds and words. Informal chats like these, can have a huge impact on her phonemic awareness and readiness for formal reading instruction…

Listening For Sounds at the Beginning of Words

Help your child to notice the sounds at the beginning of words by saying…

‘Here are some words that begin with the /b/ sound’ (Note: you should use the letter sound rather than the letter name) ‘boy, ball, bicycle, bat.’ I am going to say three words to you, can you tell me which one does not begin with /b/?’

(1) baby, ladybug, bumblebee
(2) shovel, bucket, blanket
(3) basket, apple, bird

Listening For Rhyming

Help your child to notice the sounds at the end of words by saying…

‘Here are some words that rhyme: bat & cat, ring & spring. Rhyming words are words whose endings sound the same. I am going to say two words to you, see if you can tell me if they rhyme.’

(1) king & ring
(2) up & down
(3) black & stack

Make a Substitution

Help your child to play with the sound words make (prior to reading or printing)…

(1) Change the sound at the beginning of dog to /h/
(2) Change the sound at the end of cat to /p/
(3) Change the sound in the middle of hat to /i/

Blend these sounds together

Help your child to play with the sounds letters make (prior to reading or printing)

(1) I am going to say three sounds. I want you to mush them together to make a word /d/ /o/ /g/
(2) /b/ /a/ /t/
(3) /h/ /u/ /g/

For more ways to help your child develop phonemic awareness, follow this link to visit our Phonemic Awareness page.

Discovering Meaning

‘These words are opposites; in & out, wet & dry, awake & asleep. Listen to my words. Are they opposites?’

(1) black & white
(2) yes & no
(3) sad & crying

For more ways to help your child with reading comprehension, follow this link.

You won’t regret using wordplay to support your child’s phonemic awareness – good phonemic awareness will help a young child with reading readiness and spelling.

At one of my Parent Education programs at a preschool last Fall, I talked about the importance of helping children to develop phonemic awareness. I explained that, together with alphabet recognition, good phonemic awareness is critically important for young learners. We want children to understand that words are made up of sounds and we’d like them to learn to play with the sounds in words. Developing a good understanding of rhyming is one element of this. Children who ‘get’ the concept of rhyming are gaining phonemic awareness.

After my presentation, one of the moms in the audience told me that she’s been playing, “How’s Your Nose, Rose?” with her young son. The game begins with one of them asking, “How’s Your Nose, Rose?”   The other replies with, “How’s Your Back, Jack?”  and the game continues until every possible body part rhyme has been exploited;  “How’s your toe, Joe?”,  “”How’s your arm, Parm?”,  “How’s your leg, Peg?”, “How’s your brain, Jane?” etc.

What great fun and what a marvelous learning opportunity; it doesn’t cost a penny, it can be done anywhere, and asking, “How’s your nose, Rose?” just might make waiting in a long line a tiny bit easier.    If you have a great idea for an inexpensive, portable reading lesson, I hope you’ll share it with us.

So, how’s your tummy, Mommy?

Be sure to click to visit our Phonemic Awareness page and learn more about this important indicator of readiness for reading and writing

For more information, visit our page about phonemic awareness.

The focus of our last few posts has been phonemic awareness, an important element of readiness for reading and spelling. Here are 5 easy ways you can assess your child’s phonemic awareness. Be sure to explore our related posts for additional assessment tools and ways to enhance reading and writing readiness

#1 – Can your child break a word apart by syllable? If you say “carpet” can your child hear and say “car – pet”?

#2 – Can your child mush sounds together (to make a word)? If you say “r – a – t” can your child hear and say “rat”?

#3 – Could your child hear whether two words begin with the same sound? smile and sun vs moon and earth

#4 – When asked to listen for a sound, can your child distinguish whether the sound is at the beginning, middle or end of a word? For example, when asked to listen for the /S/ sound, can your child hear it at the beginning of “skunk”, in the middle of “listen” and at the end of “tents”?

#5 – Could your child tell you the sound at the beginning of a word? Could he say which sound is at the end of a word? And, most difficult of all, could your child correctly identify the sound in the middle of a word?

It is not difficult to understand why a child with above average phonemic awareness will probably be a very good speller. If he or she can hear the sounds in words, he or she is more likely to spell the words correctly. Likewise, a child with above average phonemic awareness will probably be a very good reader.

Here are some free printables that you can use to help your child notice the sounds in words

It is worthwhile to note that these printables can be used before a child is reading or writing or after he/she is a beginning reader.

  Match the Ending Consonant Sound

Another way to help children develop phonemic awareness. Matching the ending consonant sound is more difficult than matching the beginning consonant sound.

  Match the Beginning Consonant Sound

Cut the pictures apart and have children match the initial consonant sound - a great way to support the development of phonemic awareness.

For more ways to help your child develop phonemic awareness, follow this link to visit our Phonemic Awareness page.

Our recent posts have provided lots of ways to help your child gain phonemic awareness. Here are some informal ways you can assess your child

Keep in mind that phonemic awareness is not pencil-based and does not require letters or even books. Phonemic Awareness is an understanding that words are made up of sounds. We can enhance phonemic awareness by sharing songs and stories that feature rhyming, alliteration and other wordplay but when helping a child to develop phonemic awareness, we should not be having them do worksheets or work with letters. We want to do auditory activities that help children notice sounds and understand words are made up of sounds. As they become more proficient, we help them to understand that they can manipulate those sounds to create different words with different meanings.

Using empty Film Canisters , create a sound matching activity by putting dry rice in two containers, jingle bells in two containers, small pebbles in two containers and leaving two empty. Can your child match the containers based only on the sounds they make?

Willoughby Walliby wee
An elephant sat on me
Willoughby Walliby woo
An elephant sat on you
Willoughbly Walliby Wham
An elephant sat on Sam

So I take some red
and I paint my… ______!
Now I ain’t gonna paint no more.

Aw, what the heck!
Gonna paint my… ______!
Now I ain’t gonna paint no more.

Here are the solutions to yesterday’s Hink Pink riddles

an overweight kitten (fat cat)
a very large hog (big pig)
a damp dog (wet pet)
a large stick (big twig)
a disappointed father (sad dad)
being startled by a grizzly (bear scare)
a turquise sandle (blue shoe)
how rabbits pay for things (bunny money)
24 hours without any work (play day)
mama bear massages her baby (cub rub)
use one to catch your goldfish (pet net)
rosy sheets and blankets (red bed)
rockers at the beach (sand band)

Hink Pink Riddles at Amazon.com

Hink Pink Riddles at Amazon.ca

What do you call a rabbit who tells jokes?

If you are playing around with Hink Pinks, the answer is a funny bunny.

Solving and making up Hink Pink riddles will help your child to develop phonemic awareness and, since phonemic awareness is a key to reading success will bolster early reading and spelling.

So, here are some Hink Pinks for you to try…

an overweight kitten
a very large hog
a damp dog
a large stick
a disappointed father
being startled by a grizzly
a turquoise sandle
what rabbits use to pay for things
24 hours without any work
mama bear massages her baby
use one to catch your goldfish
crimson sheets and blankets
rockers at the beach

And here are the solutions

an overweight kitten (fat cat)
a very large hog (big pig)
a damp dog (wet pet)
a large stick (big twig)
a disappointed father (sad dad)
being startled by a grizzly (bear scare)
a turquise sandle (blue shoe)
how rabbits pay for things (bunny money)
24 hours without any work (play day)
mama bear massages her baby (cub rub)
use one to catch your goldfish (pet net)
rosy sheets and blankets (red bed)
rockers at the beach (sand band)

Hink Pink Riddles at Amazon.com

Hink Pink Riddles at Amazon.ca

Websites Featuring Hink Pinks

Hink Pinks online

Trotter Math’s Hink Pinks

For more ways to help your child develop phonemic awareness, follow this link to visit our Phonemic Awareness page.

Phonemic Awareness is a key to reading readiness and hearing rhyming is a measure of it. Use these sets of free printable rhyming words in your classroom or home to develop phonemic awareness and help prepare your child for reading.

Sound matching and learning about rhyming words will help your child to gain phonemic awareness and phonemic awareness is a key to learning to read. If you are unfamiliar with the term phonemic awareness and/or if you would like to learn more about it, we encourage you to follow this link to our page about phonemic awareness.

Here are some ways you could use these free rhyming word printables to promote phonemic awareness in children

1. Print off one set of rhyming word pictures and then cut the pictures apart. Make sure your child knows what each picture is. Talk about what rhyming sounds like. Ask your child to match the words that rhyme .
(ring, king
bee, tree
hat, cat)

2. Use one set of rhyming words to play a rhyming word memory game with your child. Turn all the pictures upside down and take turns trying to patch the pairs.

3. Make a file folder memory matching game – glue one half of the rhyming pictures to the inside of the file folder and leave the remaining pictures (loose) to be matched. You can make it a self correcting activity by putting a different symbol beside each of the pictures you glued to the folder and use the same symbols on the back of the matching pictures.

Our early learning printables, including our rhyming word printables are in PDF format, if you don’t already use Adobe Reader, you will need it to access the downloads.

Click here to view our selection of free printable alphabets and all of our early learning printables.

Rhyming Word Printables

  Match the Rhyming Words

24 Pictures of rhyming words (king, ring, bee, tree, hat, cat, mouse, house, bed, red, clock, lock, tire, fire, bear, chair, train, chain, skate, gate, fox, box, frog, dog)

  Match the Rhyming Words - Set 2

24 pictures of rhyming words (whale, sail, hook, book, wig, pig, stamp, lamp, wet, jet, five, hive, hair, stair, fish, dish, flower, tower, clip, hip, moose, goose, ghost, toast)

Our pictures of rhyming words have been very, very popular with visitors to Storytime Standouts so we are adding a second set.

Use these free PDF downloads to create a rhyming word matching activity for young children. Print the PDFs, cut the pictures apart and have your child match the rhyming words. For a trickier challenge, use the pictures to play a memory-matching game.

Our free early learning printables, including our rhyming word printables are in PDF format, if you don’t already have Adobe Reader, you will need to use it to access the rhyming word printables.

Some of our early learning printables are available to Storytime Standouts members only. To become a member of the website, please click on the “Members” tab and register as a user.

  Match the Rhyming Words

24 Pictures of rhyming words (king, ring, bee, tree, hat, cat, mouse, house, bed, red, clock, lock, tire, fire, bear, chair, train, chain, skate, gate, fox, box, frog, dog)

  Match the Rhyming Words - Set 2

24 pictures of rhyming words (whale, sail, hook, book, wig, pig, stamp, lamp, wet, jet, five, hive, hair, stair, fish, dish, flower, tower, clip, hip, moose, goose, ghost, toast)

You’ll find hundreds of Storytime Standouts early learning printables here.

For more ways to help your child learn about rhyming and to help develop your child’s phonemic awareness, follow this link to visit our Phonemic Awareness page.

As always, we hope that if you enjoy our large selection of free early learning downloads, you will support this site by linking to Amazon through Storytime Standouts.

Rhyming Games at Amazon.com

Rhyming Games at Amazon.ca