Phonemic Awareness Activities For Preschoolers

In the early elementary years, your child will be able to delete sounds in a word and substitute sounds and say the new word.

For example, what is the word “clamp” without the sound “m”? The correct answer is “clap”.

I know you’re reading this because you want to be sure that you’re doing everything possible to help your toddler or preschooler learn to read easily.

Maybe you even ended up on my blog after searching for alphabet activities on Pinterest!

There’s a lot of pressure on parents these days to teach letters and sounds at home before their child starts kindergarten.

But I don’t want you to waste your precious time on alphabet activities that aren’t what your toddler or preschooler needs right now!

The result is ending up in a scenario like this frustrated mom:

"My 2.5yo son is able to recognize letters. I started doing the sounds but he looks at me like I am silly and he corrects me "A, Mommy, this is A" when I say " A, ah, ah" and he seems frustrated. Any advice?"

Here’s another struggling parent who is looking for help:

"I'm having trouble teaching my 4 year old daughter phonics. She can recognize some of the alphabet but once I teach her about the sounds of each word, she gets really confused and upset. I have tried to match the sounds to items like "a" is for "apple" but it hasn't worked. Any other methods you could advise me to try?"

To avoid frustration with teaching letter sounds, it's important to start with phonemic awareness activities.

Written words are made up of speech sounds in a row. Your child needs to learn phonics — the code between speech sounds and written symbols — to be able to write and read words.

Most alphabet activities you’ll find on Pinterest focus on getting your preschooler to memorize letter names and letter sounds out of context and in isolation.

The result is that your preschooler might not understand of what the letters actually mean.

When you help your toddler or preschool to develop phonemic awareness first, then it’s just a matter of associating the letter symbols with the speech sounds that your child already knows.

Children who struggle to learn to read often struggle with phonemic awareness.

Imagine how challenging it would be to learn sound-letter associations if you struggle to hear and identify the speech sounds in spoken words.

That’s why I recommend skipping letter recognition activities until your preschooler understands that letters represent speech sounds.

I also don't want you to waste time teaching letter names. It’s information that doesn’t help your preschooler sound out words.

Knowing letter names can sometimes interfere with learning phonics!

The 2005 National Reading Panel Report agrees that phonemic awareness should come first:

"Without phonemic awareness, phonics is harder to learn. In other words, phonemic awareness is something that should be taught before phonics."

If this is news to you, you're not alone. In fact, there's still a gap between reading instruction in schools and the science of reading.

So you're in the right place to set up your toddler or preschooler for success with learning to read!

Most children around 3 years old are developmentally ready to start developing phonemic awareness by drawing attention to the beginning sound of spoken words.

The first step is to draw attention to the beginning sounds of spoken words by playing the Montessori version of the "I SPY" game.

Instead of inviting your preschooler to find something that’s a specific color, you’ll invite your child to look for something that starts with a specific speech sound (phoneme).

You can easily draw attention to the beginning sound of spoken words during everyday conversation, but it’s extra fun with Montessori language objects or letter sounds pictures.

Having props also provides a bit more structure to this phonemic awareness activity.

For example, you might have a set of beginning sounds objects inside a bag and then pull out a few.

You’ll name each beginning sounds object as you take it out.

Then say: “I see something that starts with the sound /r/…. rainbow! Rainbow starts with /r/.”

The more you model hearing the beginning sound of spoken words, the more your preschooler will start to understand the game and begin to develop phonemic awareness.

Eventually you can ask your toddler or preschooler to point to or say the object that starts with a given sound.

Over time your toddler or preschooler will understand that spoken words are made up of speech sounds in a row, and that letters (and combinations of letters) represent individual speech sounds in written words.

No letters are involved when getting started with phonemic awarness activities with toddlers or preschoolers.

If you search for “phonemic awareness activities” on Pinterest, you’ll find a lot of other types of activities that DO involve letter symbols.

It can be really confusing! For example, you’ll find activities for “matching letters and initial sounds” or “beginning sounds clip cards”.

Hold off on alphabet activities with letters until it’s clear that your toddler or preschooler can come up with a few words beginning with a speech sound that you say.

Phonemic awareness activities make it easier for your toddler or preschooler to learn letter-sound correspondence.

Just a few minutes a day can make a huge difference and really sets up your preschooler for success with learning phonics.

Phonemic awareness activities don’t involve any letter symbols.

This means you can do phonemic awareness activities during every day conversations. You can even play these beginning sounds games anytime and anywhere.

Hold off on alphabet activities to teach letter recognition until your toddler or preschooler has enough phonemic awareness to at least identify the beginning sound of spoken words.

Then it's just a matter of showing that those speech sounds look like using letters, and doing fun sound-letter matching activities to reinforce that association.

When you focus on just what your toddler or preschooler needs right now, you’ll save a lot of time and energy.

You’ll also avoid the frustration that comes with introducing concepts before your toddler or preschooler is ready for them.

Related Article: Beginning Sounds Activities Before Learning Phonics