What is Phonemic Awareness? Why is it Important?
Phonemic Awareness is one of the best predictors of reading achievement.
This awareness is the ability to separate and manipulate individual sounds within
spoken language. Phonemic Awareness Activities at the kindergarten level include:

1. Rhyming - being able to identify a pair of words that rhyme and also being able to produce a rhyming word for a target word.

2. Sound Isolation - being able to identify the beginning and ending sounds of words.

3. Syllable Counting - clapping the number of syllables in two, three, and four syllable words.

4. Syllable Deletion - taking off the first or last syllable of a two syllable word.

5. Phoneme Segmentation - identifying each individual sound, or phoneme, in a word.

Games To Play

While driving to the grocery store, talk about the things you will be buying. Start to form silly words that rhyme with your list. For example, "I need to buy some cereal. Do you think we need some mereal??" Continue the silly rhymes helping your child figure out if the words rhyme: Juice - buice, milk - eggs, cookies - tookies, cheese - please, etc.

Before a child can make up a rhyming word, he/she must be able to hear sounds and isolate them. Play a sound game by saying the letter name, sound, and a word that starts with that letter (Bb.../b/...baby, Dd.../d/...dog, etc).

A child should be able to hear when two words rhyme. Sometimes accentuating the ending sound when saying the rhyming words helps. Play a game where you say three words, two that rhyme...one that doesn't. The child should tell you which two words rhyme (ex. mouse, clock, house...which two rhyme?).