Activities to develop phonological awareness

Activities to develop phonological awareness skills

‘Phonological’ (speech sound) awareness, are the skills that allow children to hear and differentiate the speech sounds that make up words, including being able to identify first sounds, last sounds, syllables, and rhymes. These skills are very important for children to develop clear speech sounds, as well as for their reading, writing and literacy skills later in childhood.

Phonological awareness activities

Syllable Clapping
Support your child to be able to hear the different parts (syllables) of words by clapping them out together. For example, “ca-ter-pi-llar” or “e-le-phant”.
 
I-Spy
Support your child to learn about the first sounds of words by playing the game ‘I-Spy’. Make it easier to start with by having just 3-4 items on the table. Remember to use the sound, rather than the letter name, for example “I Spy something beginning with sssss”
 
Sound Hunts
Encourage your child to hunt for things that start with a certain sound at home, or when you are out and about. For example, for /s/ you might find a sock, spoon, snake, and slipper.
 
Nursery Rhymes and Story Books
Sing nursery rhymes and read rhyming story books together to learn about rhyming words. Leave pauses for your child to fill in the gap or make up new lyrics with your own rhymes!
 
Take a look at our Phonological Awareness handout for more information about how to support your child’s speech sound awareness skills.
 
BBC Tiny Happy People have some helpful videos about phonological awareness and activities to try at home.

Phonological awareness and literacy

Spoken words are made up of speech sounds, and written words are made up of letters. When learning to read and write, children need to be able to understand the link between speech sounds and the alphabet.
 
Phonological awareness skills help children to learn how sounds and letters go together in words. For example, knowing that the sound “sss” can be represented by the letter ‘s’. They allow children to be able to segment, blend, and de-code words. These skills are essential for children to develop their reading and writing skills.

Phonological awareness activities for school-aged children

Rhyming Games
Once your child is confident in being able to hear rhymes, try making up your own silly rhymes together and see how many rhymes you can do, for instance “cat hat fat mat bat…”.
 
Word Games
Play “I went on holiday…” thinking of words that start with one sound, for instance if the sound is ‘b’, you could pack a ‘bin’ ‘bed’ ‘box’ and so on. If your child learns best with more concrete learning experiences, you could play this game with a real bag or suitcase and collect a range of objects beginning with different sounds. Start the game by packing the first item, for example some beads, in the suitcase, and say that you need to pack all the things that start with the same sound as ‘beads’ – such as book, banana, ball, bag.
 
Odd One Out
Have 3 pictures or objects and encourage your child to decide which one is the odd one out. For example, for sun, sock and cat, the odd one out would be ‘cat’ because it starts with a /k/ sound.
 
‘What am I?’
Play a describing game where you give clues about the words. For example, for ‘cat’ you could say “I am an animal. I have 4 legs. I am furry. I have whiskers. The first sound of my name is /k/. What am I?”.
 
Sound-Letter games
Take turns to choose or write a letter, and then say as many words as you can think of starting with that letter.

Last updated02 Aug 2024
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