Before learning to read, children must understand their spoken language. The first step in understanding spoken language is becoming aware of the different sounds that words contain within that language.

This is called phonemic awareness—one of the most important concepts in early literacy education. 

To help young learners achieve necessary milestones on their way to reading readiness, an understanding of phonemic awareness is crucial. 

Whether you’re new to this concept or simply want a refresher, here’s an overview of phonemic awareness for phonics instruction. We’ll also share some fun classroom activities that improve this important skill!

Phonemic Awareness: The Building Blocks of Phonics

Young children inherently learn that spoken language is made up of verbal sounds. As they build phonemic awareness during their first years of development, children learn many individual sounds that can be combined to form specific words. 

Building on this awareness, children begin to learn what certain words mean and then gradually use learned words to express themselves and communicate. 

Children build phonemic awareness over time in the presence of fluent adults and family. While language development happens naturally for most children, the phonics skills required for reading and writing must be explicitly taught. 

Therefore, phonemic awareness is the foundation of the reading pyramid:

There are proven activities that educators and parents can use to support phonemic development.

Ways to Strengthen Phonemic Awareness for Phonics Education

While phonemic awareness starts in early childhood development, direct instruction (and lots of practice) helps kids apply these skills toward phonics learning. 

Some children start learning phonics as early as three years old. Many, however, start learning once they enter kindergarten. Whether your little learner is in daycare, preschool, or kindergarten, you can give these activities a try!

1. Rhyme Scavenger Hunt

Rhyming is a crucial skill when it comes to phonemic awareness. To help kids identify and come up with words that rhyme, have a “rhyme” scavenger hunt.

1. Create a list of classroom items you’ll use in the scavenger hunt. 
2. Come up with words that rhyme with each item. These words will be the students’ scavenger hunt clues.
3. Share the rhyming clue out loud then have students guess the answer. Let them get up, walk around, and physically “hunt” for the item they think rhymes with the clue.
4. Every time students identify the correct item, have them raise their hands to guess what other words rhyme with it.
5. You can also play this fun activity outdoors for an added challenge.

2. Sort Out the Sound

Engaging kids in sound sorting is an effective phonemic awareness activity. This helps them identify beginning, middle, and end sounds.

1. Give students a sheet of paper that has pictures of different objects such as dog, duck, pig, pale, rock, and sock.
2. Let students cut out each item.
3. Instruct students to sort their cutouts based on the sounds you say. For example: “the beginning sound is /d/” or “the ending sound is /ck/”.
4. Review students’ guesses and correct them when necessary.
5. Repeat until all the sounds have been sorted.

3. Clapping Through Syllables

For syllable awareness, you can have children use their bodies to emphasize how many syllables a word has.

1. Have students respond to words you say by clapping their hands for each syllable in each word.
2. Repeat each word several times as a class, changing the speed from slow to fast.
3. You can also change it up with stomping, jumping, or dancing.

4. Letter Mystery Bag

Help your students practice sound placement with this fun, interactive mystery bag!

1. Place a bunch of toy letters in a bag. They can be foam, plastic, or wood.
2. Have each student take turns reaching into the bag without looking. Whichever letter they pull out, ask them to make the sound that letter makes.
3. Then, have the whole group repeat the letter sound.
4. You can also have students pull out multiple letters in a row and see if the class can make a word from those letters.

5. Head-to-Toe Word Syllables

Get some movement in while practicing word segmentation for phonemic awareness.

1. Explain and demonstrate the activity: students will touch parts of their bodies to show parts of a word.
2. Beginning sounds = head.
3. Middle sounds = hips.
4. End sounds = toes.
5. Say a word, such as “popsicle.”
6. Have students repeat the word as they break up its syllables head to toe. 
7. For “popsicle,” children touch their heads for /pop/, their hips for /sih/, and their toes for /cull/. 

6. Guess the Rhyme I’m Thinking Of

Have the class guess which rhyming word you’re thinking of.

1. Give the class a rhyming clue: “I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with cat.”
2. Let students guess the rhyming word, popcorn style.
3. Feel free to use nonsense words for fun! For example: “I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with zoodle!” for the word “noodle.”

7. Make Sounds in a Mirror

For young children, making words in a mirror can be a fun activity at any time of day.

1. Place a small mirror in front of the child.
2. Ask them if they can repeat a word while making the funniest, most dramatic pronunciations with their face. Show them an example to begin with. 
3. Talk about what the tongue and lips are doing while making a certain sound. 
4. Have fun being goofy together and watching how words are formed!

8. Tongue Twisters

Tongue twisters are a classic way to get kids thinking about phonemes and pronunciation. 

1. Find skills-appropriate tongue twisters to try with the class.
2. Practice each one through “repeat after me,” call and response, and recite from memory.
3. Use this list of tongue twisters for plenty of ideas.

9. Sound Monsters

Make phonemes so playful that kids look forward to practicing every day. The sound-eating monster is a classroom favorite.

1. Make several cute monsters using shoe boxes (for the body and mouth) and craft supplies (for the eyes, spikes, and facial features). 
2. Explain how the Sound Monsters need to be fed every day. Sometimes the monsters have an appetite for different types of sounds, so the class needs to be careful which sounds in words they choose!
3. Each day, get the class excited to “feed” the monsters. Rotate which students get to feed them so everyone has a turn throughout the week.
4. Provide a bunch of notecards with pictures or words, such as baby, ball, apple, frog, etc.
5. Choose which sounds a specific monster wants that day and act it out for the class. “Today, this Word Monster wants to eat the sound, ahhh.”
6. Have students select notecards that contain words or pictures with the correct sounds.
7. Make it fun and mix up the phonemes to make it challenging: “Today, this monster wants to eat the beginning sounds shh and sss.”

10. Simon Says Blending

Phoneme blending is one of the most important phonemic awareness skills students can have when learning to read. 

1. Tell the class you will play Simon Says, a game where the teacher asks students to do an action, but only if they hear “Simon Says” first. 
2. Instead of saying the action word, say all of the sounds in the word and ask students to blend the sounds to figure out the action. For example, “Simon says /s/ /i/ /t/ down” or “Simon says /j/ /u/ /m/ /p/ up!”
3. Mix up the gameplay by asking one of the students to be the new “Simon”. 

Classroom Reading and Phonics Apps

Using technology in the classroom is helpful for digital native learners. In addition to these fun group activities, consider classroom reading and phonics apps that include phonemic awareness exercises.

Explore phonics.org to learn more ways to strengthen your students’ phonemic awareness. Find some of the best early phonics programs on the market today!