Phonic sounds for kindergarten
14 Phenomenal Phonics Activities for Preschoolers
It’s difficult to overstate how important reading and language are. These skills are the foundation for a lifetime of success, so it’s only natural if you’re seeking out ways to make sure the little ones in your care are on solid ground. One tried-and-true method for building literacy skills is through the use of phonics activities. In this article we’ll help explain what phonics are and share some excellent phonics activities we’ve found from preschool professionals.
What are phonics?
It’s pretty simple—phonics are just the relationships between letters and the sounds they make. For instance, the letter “p” sounds like /p/ and the letter combination of “tion” sounds /shun/. Though letter combinations like “tion” are more complex, preschoolers can get started learning to recognize simpler letter sounds.
Learning phonics will help young kids decode words to learn how they’re pronounced and what they mean. This will give them a leg up on writing and spelling. Normally learned between kindergarten and second grade, phonics activities are available for every age, including remarkably simple and amusing options for you and your child. We’ve gathered the best on the web just for you and your preschooler.
14 Fun phonics activities for preschoolers
1. Rainbow hop letter sounds game
This kinetic phonics game from Fun Learning for Kids transforms your living room into a life-sized board game. Simply use colored paper, one die and a marker to create a stepping-stone for every letter of the alphabet or however many you have room for. You can even include “ch” and “sh” pieces for more advanced learners. For the game, your child will roll the die, take the allotted number of hops and say and pronounce the letter that they land on. Perfect for playing with siblings or parents or friends, this active game will help your little one learn both letter sounds and counting.
2. Alphabet ball
Best played outside or in a gym, this super simple active game from Hands On As We Grow will keep your energetic preschooler moving, grooving and learning. First, the adult calls out a letter and the child responds with a word that begins with that letter. Then, the adult throws the ball to the child and the child gives the adult a letter to find a word for, and on and on. You can make the game even more fun by kicking the ball or chasing each other to tag with the ball. You can also play rhyming ball, where the thrower provides a word for the catcher to rhyme with.
3. Alphabet phonics clip cards
You can download these free, fun and easily portable phonics clip cards from Kids Activities. Using clothespins or any other kind of nonpermanent marker, your child will mark which animal name starts with the letter “z,” “b” or “s” depending on the card. These colorful cards enable your child to work on word association and sounds while in the car, waiting at the doctor’s office or relaxing at home.
4. Letter sounds race
This Letter Sounds Race from Inspiration Laboratories is perfect for your little sprinter. Place letter magnet opposite any magnetic surface—magnet board, the fridge or easel. While your kiddo stands near the magnet board, pronounce a letter sound, have them run to the letter magnets, pick out the corresponding letter and place it on the magnet board. You can help your younger child learn new letter sounds by asking them to find and place the letter, pronounce the letter sound and ask them to repeat it.
5. Phonic photo scavenger hunt
Get clicking with this bright idea from VeryWell Family. Have your preschooler create a photo album, either physical or digital, with a photo of an item for every letter sound: “a” for anthill to “z” for zoo. This is an easy way to keep the learning flowing while on vacation or on the go. This can be done again and again to learn new sounds like “ch” or “sh.”
6. Spin & rhyme
No Time For Flash Cards suggests a creative alternative to boring work sheets. Use a paper towel roll and clothes hanger to easily create rhyming words (e.g., cat, pat, mat, sat). This exercise also helps your little one learn how to break down words and identify word families. The simple setup is easy to transport and provides a kinetic twist to a basic phonics activity.
7. Erase the sound
Your little artist will love this simple and visually stimulating activity. Draw a picture on a whiteboard or chalkboard, name individual letters and have your child identify and erase items in the picture that start with that letter. PreKinders suggests drawing a snowman with a hat for “h,” buttons for “b” and carrot for “c.” If your child is old enough, you could also reverse the roles of artist and eraser, once they see how it’s done.
8. Mystery bag
In this tactile activity from PreKinders, you’ll place three objects within a bag—like a ball, bug and button for the letter “b”—have your child name each item, and guess the “mystery letter” that unites all of the objects. If you have more than one little one learning phonics, you can have them fill a bag for the others with objects around the house to have the others guess.
9. 4 in a row
The Measured Mom recommends this game for older preschoolers who can count to four and know most of their letters, but need a bit of review. You can print this simple sheet from this website and take turns naming and pronouncing a letter. When you or your child names a letter correctly, you can color it in or cover it with a small object or game piece. The first to get four in a row wins!
10. Kaboom alphabet
Using just jumbo craft sticks and a cup, each player will pull a stick out of the cup and say the sound of the letter written on the stick they draw. Then, they get to keep that stick. But “KABOOM” is written on one stick and every time it’s pulled, the unlucky player has to put all their sticks back in the cup. You can even set a timer as Fun Learning for Kids recommends for a fun speed-round version.
11. Say two words
This simple game from PreKinders requires zero materials and allows kiddos to stretch their legs and get some energy out. When you say two words that begin with the same sound, they should stand up as fast as they can, but stay seated if the words do not begin with the same sound. If playing with more children, you can create an elimination system, so that there’s one clear winner determined.
12. Monster names
This simple activity from PreKinders is fun anytime and takes absolutely zero setup. Have preschoolers replace the first letter of their name with the letter “M,” and add ‘mad’ to the beginning. For example, Ashely would become Mad Monster Mashlyn. The kiddos can then stomp around, growl and play monsters with each other. This simple approach for reinforcing phonetic sounds can obviously be expanded and modified for further practice (e.g., Cool Cat Cashlyn, Funny Fish Fashlyn, etc.).
13. Smack the letter
Fun Learning for Kids recommends this flexible and fun game. Preschoolers will love getting to use a flyswatter to hit the letters you write on sticky notes and pronounce for them to identify. You can pick the letter sounds they most need to work on. If playing with a peer, this game can become a race. Two to three children can play for points to see who can reach 10 first. It can also be played tournament-style, if you’re working with a larger group.
14. Phonics I-Spy discovery bottle
Imagination Tree offers this fun boredom buster. Fill a large juice bottle with a variety of small items that start with various letters, using rice or sand as a filler for the remaining space. To play, use an alphabet deck or phonics clip cards to pick a letter and have your child shake the bottle and hunt for the item with the corresponding beginning letter.
Make phonics fun!
If these ideas excite you, it probably isn’t because you only love phonics. It’s more likely you love helping little ones develop their minds too. If making a career out of that love sounds like a bright idea, learn about just how important early childhood education is and how you could play a role in it.
How parents can teach kids phonics sounds in English?
Hello Parents, K Learning Kids’ exercise is to learn and apply the letters to peruse or spell phonic words in English. In numerous schools start phonics sounds in kindergarten at 3 years old years.
Phonic English words have names, and letters have sounds.
The children are learning the sounds that letters make. Bit by bit, the hints of letters and their elocution are acquainted with the children for simple learning. By this, the children can have an agreeable passage into the universe of Phonics and become acquainted with the words. In this exercise, you can relate the English letter sets to the Hindi letters order. At the point when children learn phonics sound will peruse every one of the 2 or 3 letter mixing words from their books.
Your child can learn phonics sounds using Hindi sounds
Click here to know about more Phonics
Vowel Sound
Aa | 'a' sound as in cat or apple (not in ape or name) | |
Ee | 'e' sound as in bed or set ( not in feed or meet) | |
Ii | 'i' as in big or sit and ink (not in ice cream) | |
Oo | 'o' as in not or God (not in open) | |
Uu | 'u' as in but or fun (not in uniform) |
Consonant Sound
Bb | says | ब | The sound of 'b' as in bib. | |
Cc | says | स | The sound of 'c' as in cat(k) (not the sound of 'c' as in see) | |
Dd | says | ड | The sound of 'd' as in bad. | |
Ff | says | फ | the sound of 'f' as in bluff (place the upper teeth lightly on the lower lip and at the same time force your breath in a steady stream) | |
Gg | says | ग | The sound of 'g' as in girl or bag. | |
Hh | says | ह | The sound of 'h' as in hat. | |
Jj | says | ज | The sound of 'j' as in Raj or jelly. | |
Kk | says | क | The sound of 'k' as in back. | |
Ll | says | ल | The sound of 'l' as in ball. | |
Mm | says | म | The sound of 'm' as in dam. | |
Nn | says | न | The sound of 'n' in fun. | |
Pp | says | प | The sound of 'p' as in pup (Close your lips tightly, below them apart with little puffs of breath) | |
says | कव | The sound of 'q' as in queen. | ||
Rr | says | र | The sound of 'r' as in rat. | |
Ss | says | स | The sound fo 's' as in yes (make the hissing sound sss...) | |
Tt | says | ट | The sound of 't' as on bot. | |
Vv | says | व | The final sound of 'v' as in give or five (bite of your lower lip when pronouncing) | |
Ww | says | व | The of 'w' as in way (make a circle of the lips to pronounce the first sound) | |
Xx | says | कस | The sound of 'x' as in six (A combined sound fo k and s) | |
Yy | says | य | The first sound of 'y' as in yes | |
Zz | says | ज़ | The find sound of 'z' as in jazz. |
Download phonics printable take a print & past it in front of kids study table.
Focus on Lesson
- Children learn and identify the letter sound.
- They can easily associate letter sound with beginning word sound
Age Group :
- Kindergarten to 1st grade
- 3years to 5years
You can take a printout of the phonics sheet & paste it in front of children.
For many children, practicing the ability to recognize sounds in words can make a big difference in how fast they learn to read.
– Pooja Kapoor
Games with sounds - Site of kindergarten №422 "Lorik"
Games with sounds help to develop phonetic hearing and phonemic perception.
Phonetic hearing is a fine systematized hearing, the ability to distinguish and recognize the sounds that make up a word. Without a developed phonetic hearing, the correct pronunciation of sounds is impossible.
In the case of phonetic underdevelopment, the child mixes voiced and deaf, hard and soft consonants, does not distinguish between whistling and hissing, "R" and "L", "C" and "Ch" and others.
Phonemic perception is the ability to distinguish phonemes and determine the sound composition of a word. How many syllables are in poppy? How many sounds does it have? What consonant is at the end of a word? What is the vowel in the middle of a word? It is phonemic perception that helps answer these questions.
The correct development of phonetic hearing and phonemic perception underlies the unmistakable assimilation of writing and reading in the process of schooling.
We bring to your attention some games that contribute to the development of phonemic processes.
“Select the word”
Invite the children to clap their hands (stomp their feet, hit their knees, raise their hands…) when they hear the words, with the given sound.
“What sound do all words have?”
An adult pronounces three or four words, each of which has the same sound: fur coat, cat, mouse - and asks the child what sound is in all these words.
"Who is more?"
Looking at the pictures in the book together with your child, invite him to find among them those in the names of which there is a sound “R”. for each named word an encouraging point is given.
“Come up with more”
The leader, naming some sound, asks the players to come up with 3 words in which the given sound occurs.
"Chains of words"
This game is an analogue of the well-known "cities". It consists in the fact that the next player calls his word to the last sound of the word given by the previous player. A chain of words is formed: aist - Plate - Watermelon.
“The Fourth Extra”
For the game you will need four pictures with images of objects, three of which contain the specified sound in the name, and one does not. The adult lays them out in front of the child and offers to determine which picture is superfluous and why. The set can be varied, for example: a cup, glasses, a cloud, a bridge; bear, bowl, dog, chalk; road, board, oak, shoes. If the child does not understand the task, then ask him leading questions, ask him to carefully listen to the sounds in the words. An adult can highlight the identified sound with his voice. As a variant of the game, you can select words with different syllabic structures (3 three-syllable words, and one two-syllable), different stressed syllables. The task helps to develop not only phonemic perception, but also attention, logical thinking.
“Young Poets”
An adult gives the child a set of pictures and asks them to arrange them in pairs with similar word endings (mice - donuts, daughters - dots, barrel - kidney, etc.). Before the game begins, you can look at the pictures, drawing the child's attention to the endings of the words denoting the depicted objects. Then, with these pairs of pictures, you can make sentences - couplets, for example:
They lived in a mink - there were mice,
And donuts lay on the table.
"Echo"
The game serves to exercise phonemic awareness and the accuracy of auditory perception. You can play alone or in a large group. Before the game, an adult addresses the children: “Have you ever heard an echo? When you travel in the mountains or through the forest, pass through an archway, or are in a large empty hall, you may encounter an echo. That is, you, of course, will not be able to see it, but you can hear it. If you say: “Echo, hello!”, then it will answer you: “Echo, hello!”, Because it always repeats exactly what you tell it. Now let's play echo." Then they appoint a driver - "Echo", who must repeat what he is told. It is better to start with simple words, then move on to difficult and long ones (for example, “ay”, “rather”, “windbreak”).
Catch a Fish
This game requires a magnetic rod. This is an ordinary stick, tied to it on a string with a magnet. Clips are put on pictures from any children's lotto. The child catches with a fishing rod only those pictures in the name of which there is a certain sound, selected in advance. Or a child catches a picture and calls the sound with which its name begins.
"Jokes - minutes"
You read lines from poetry to children, intentionally replacing letters in words. Children find a mistake in a poem and correct it. Examples :
Patterned tail,
boots w t orami.
Tili-bom! Tili-bom!
Catkin t ohm caught fire.
Behind the window is a winter garden,
There the leaves in and glasses are sleeping.
"Beginning, middle, end"
Teach children to identify the place of sound in a word - at the beginning, in the middle, at the end. Offer to find in the picture, among the pictures of the loto, words that start with A and end with A. Or just offer to determine the place of the sound in the word.
“Think, take your time”
Give the children a few quick-witted tasks:
– Choose a word that begins with the last sound of the word “table”.
- Remember the name of the bird, which would have the last sound of the word cheese. (sparrow, rook ...)
- Choose a word so that the first sound is "k" and the last is "a".
- Invite the child to name an object in a room with a given sound. For example: What ends with "A"; what starts with “C”, in the middle of the word there is a sound “T”, etc.
What are letters and sounds? - Kindergarten No. 220 JSC Russian Railways
Usually parents say that the child does not pronounce some letters! Unfortunately, parents do not always understand the difference between such concepts as “sound” and “letter”. These terms must not be mixed!
Sound is the smallest, indivisible unit of speech flow perceived by the ear. There are 42 speech sounds in Russian.
The letters are graphic characters that represent speech sounds when writing. There are 33 letters in total.
We pronounce and hear sounds, we see and write letters .
For parents of children of primary and secondary preschool age, is enough if the baby remembers that the letter stands for the sound "P" and learns it like "P" and not "er", "L" and not "el" ”, “Sh”, not “sha”, etc.
Parents, preschool children and first graders need to know much more about sounds and letters.
Sounds are divided into vowels and consonants.
Vowels - when they are pronounced, the air in the mouth passes freely without encountering obstacles. There are 10 vowels in Russian ( a, y, o, e, s, e, e. i, yu, i). There are only 6 vowels - [a], [o], [y], [i], [s], [e]. The fact is that the vowels e, e. yu, i in some positions denote 2 sounds:
ё - [y'o], e - [y'e], yu - [y'y], i - [y'a].
Vowel sounds are indicated by a red circle. Vowel sounds are neither hard and soft, nor voiced and deaf A vowel sound can be stressed or unstressed. Vowels form a syllable. There are as many syllables in a word as there are vowels.
Consonants sounds - when they are pronounced, the air in the mouth meets barriers formed by the tongue, teeth or lips.
Consonants are :
- hard - are pronounced hard. Marked with a blue circle. For example: [p], [k], [d], etc.;
- soft - soft. Marked with a green circle.
For example: [p']= (p), [k']= (k), [d']= (d).
Most consonants have a pair of hardness-softness.