Prepare Your Preschooler for Reading: Phonemic Awarness Games

Phonemic awareness games are fun and practical.

Setting the stage with solid knowledge of the sounds of speech while also providing your young one a glimpse into the delights of reading books about the wider world will benefit your child and you as a parent.

Read aloud often and enthusiastically. Choose books that stand the test of time, in other words, books that will be interesting to you as well. That is the test of a great children's story. Any child can enter kindergarten or first grade inspired and prepared for early reading lessons. By reading aloud daily and opening the door to phonemic awareness, or the sounds of speech and how they blend to form words, your preschool child will be primed and ready to go. To make this the most positive experience, games that include multiple senses will have the most profound impact on retaining those sounds and attaching them to the letters and letter groups, known as phonograms.

Research warns that without direct instruction in phonemic awareness, about 25% of first-graders from middle-class homes lack this skill, resulting in difficulty in learning to read and write. *

“Phonogram,” similar to “phoneme,” means a written symbol representing a sound. So the letter “a” represents three distinct sounds as in the words apple, ape, and wasp. But before learning phonogram sounds or even letter names, it is appropriate to learn to distinguish various sounds from one another. Here are a few beginning game ideas.

1. Any listening game, such as “Mother, May I?” can be used for this. Also, add training in attentiveness by playing “Whisper Me,” where you whisper the child’s name, and if he comes to you the first time, he gets a special hug and kiss or a treat.

Work toward training the child to distinguish between sounds like tapping, clapping, and snapping. After naming and demonstrating the sounds, ask the child to close her eyes and listen to name the sounds, then listen to determine a missing sound, and, finally, to listen for the sequence of the sounds.

A mom showing her preschool son how the sound of "s" is formed.

2. Rhyming games, poetry, rhyming stories. Fingerplays that rhyme are easy to act out with your hands. Here are a few samples. One way to use these is to whisper the words that rhyme. Another variation is to omit the rhyming words after a few readings for repetition.

3. Words and Sentences. Practice how to distinguish between individual words of long and short length and various kinds of sentences: questions, statements, requests or commands. Build sentences using individual word cards. Count words in each sentence. Break words into syllables together by clapping the syllables or by lowering your jaw for each vowel sound while holding your palm flat under the chin. When the jaw touches the hand, you count that as one syllable.

The next level of games includes syllable awareness, phonograms or phonemes, and letter names and spellings.

A mom showing how to recognize the letter "H."

A fabulous resource on this topic is Phonemic Awareness in Young Children by Marily Jager Adams, et. al.   *Adams, M.J. (1990) Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambidge, MA: MIT Press.

Susan Franklin

3/27/25