For Parents

Help your child strengthen their literacy skills at any stage of development.

Your family plays a big role in helping your child learn to read and write. With the right phonics activities at home, you can support your child’s literacy development and academic success. The more you understand how and why phonics instruction works, the better you can facilitate effective and meaningful learning experiences with your family. 

To help your child practice phonics at home, read our insights for parents below! You can also browse our phonics program reviews for more.

Phonics Education for Families

Making Phonics Stick: Help Kids Learn Essential Literacy Skills 

Sometimes, it seems like no matter how much you practice with your child or...

fun phonics games for kids

Fun Phonics Games for Kids: Activities to Try at Home 

Kids need to master basic phonics skills before they can become proficient readers. While...

learn to reach decoding in reading for kids

Methods of Effective Decoding in Reading

When children are learning to read, they must be taught how to “sound out”...

what is phonics?

What is Phonics? An Introduction for Parents and Educators

Anyone who can read and write in an alphabetical language has mastered an important...

The Dyslexia-Phonics Connection: Why Structured Literacy Is Non-Negotiable

The Dyslexia-Phonics Connection: Why Structured Literacy Is Non-Negotiable

If you’re reading this because something feels off with your child’s reading, trust that instinct. Roughly one in five kids in any classroom shows signs of dyslexia, and most won’t…

IEP Goals and Phonics: What to Ask For and Why

IEP Goals and Phonics: What to Ask For and Why

If you’ve already sat through an IEP meeting and walked out feeling like the reading goals were soft, vague, or weirdly disconnected from what your child actually needs, you’re not…

How To Use Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping at Home

How To Use Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping at Home

When your child writes “sip” instead of “ship,” they’re not making a careless mistake. They’re missing a small but important skill. They haven’t yet learned that two letters, “s” and…

Sight Words and Phonics: Friends, Not Enemies

Sight Words and Phonics: Friends, Not Enemies

If you’ve spent any time in early literacy circles, you’ve probably noticed something strange: people argue about sight words. One camp says memorizing sight words is essential. Another says it’s…

Word Sorting: The Low-Tech Phonics Strategy with Big Results

Word Sorting: The Low-Tech Phonics Strategy with Big Results

Among kindergarten teachers, word sorting holds a quiet kind of reverence. It asks for nothing more than a small pile of word cards and a child willing to look closely,…

Dictation as a Phonics Tool: Why Writing Reinforces Reading

Dictation as a Phonics Tool: Why Writing Reinforces Reading

Most parents and teachers think of reading and writing as separate skills taught at different times of day. Reading comes first, the thinking goes, and writing follows once a child…

Decodable vs. Leveled Readers: Which Belongs in Your Child’s Hands

Decodable vs. Leveled Readers: Which Belongs in Your Child’s Hands

Walk into any kindergarten classroom, and you will see two very different books being handed to children learning to read. One says, “Sam can tap. Sam can nap.” The other…

Cumulative Review in Phonics: The Strategy Most Programs Skip

Cumulative Review in Phonics: The Strategy Most Programs Skip

When a child learns the short /a/ sound on Monday, blends CVC words on Tuesday, tackles digraphs on Wednesday, and then never returns to short /a/ again, something strange happens.…

Phonics Scope and Sequence: What It Is and Why It Matters

Phonics Scope and Sequence: What It Is and Why It Matters

Imagine handing a child a jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box and no guidance about where to begin. A few kids might figure it out eventually, but most…

How to Structure a Phonics Lesson From Start to Finish

How to Structure a Phonics Lesson From Start to Finish

Here’s something that might surprise you: the order of a phonics lesson matters almost as much as the content inside it. A child who sits down for 20 minutes of…