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Activities that Stimulate Phonemic Awareness

Is your child phonemically aware?  Meaning:  Does your child recognize that speech is made up of a series of individual sounds that can be manipulated?  Children who are phonemically aware are able to do the following:

Rhyme

Do these words rhyme?

fish            dish (yes)

hill             mail (no)

run             ran  (no)

Phoneme Blending:  Blend isolated sounds together to form a word.

What word do we have when we put these sounds together?

a-t (at)

b-i-g (big)

ch-i-n (chin)

Phoneme Isolation:  Segment spoken words into their individual sounds.

What is the beginning sound in rose? (/r/)

What is the final sound in pencil? (/l/)

What is the sound in the middle of cat? (/a/)

Phoneme Segmentation: 

What sounds do you hear in these words?

dog (/d/-/o/-/g/)

race (/r/-/a/-/s/)

up (/u/-/p/)

Phoneme Substitution:  Substitute sounds in spoken words.

What word would we have if we changed the /t/ in Tommy to an /m/? (mommy)

What word would we have if we changed the /t/ in hot to a /p/? (hop)

What word would we have if we changed the /i/ in sit to an /a/? (sat)

Phoneme Addition:  Add sounds to spoken words.

What word would we have if we added a /g/ to the beginning of row? (grow)

What word would we have if we added and /l/ to the middle of boo? (blue)

What word would we have if we added a /t/ to the end of ow? (out)

Phoneme Deletion:  Delete a sound from a spoken word.

What word would we have if we left the /t/ out of the middle of stand? (sand)

What word would we have if we left the /s/ off the beginning of spin? (pin)

What word would we have if we left the /l/ off the end of seal? (sea)

This information taken from an article titled: Phonemic Awareness, by Dr. Hallie Kay Yopp