Preschool Play & Learn: Foamy Phonemic Awareness! 🦻🏼🔤

Phonemic awareness (the ability to listen to and manipulate sounds in words) is a critical element to beginning to spell and read words. This is a simple sensory activity that you can use with your little learner (most likely ages 4 to 6) to help build their ability to listen to sounds and blend them together to make a word.

What you need:

🌀FOAM! https://amzn.to/4lPvaZs

🌀A surface suited for mess!

What to do:

☝🏻Tell your little learner that they will be listening to some sounds. Their job is to listen for each sound to discover what word will be made.

☝🏻You will make a list of words to pull from. See the lists below for easiest to more challenging words to blend.

☝🏻Say each sound individually for your learner to guess the word. ie. “/c/…/a/…/t/.” If you’re starting with a beginner, segmenting words into syllables will be best. (See list below)

☝🏻Your learner can use their fingers and foam to draw a picture of the word they just blended.

Here are some good “go -to” lists!

BEGINNER:

Rainbow RAIN - BOW

Cupcake CUP - CAKE

Banana BA - NA - NA

Chocolate CHO - CO - LATE

Underwear UN - DER - WEAR

A LITTLE HARDER:

Cat - /C/ /A/ /T/

Dog - /D/ /O/ /G/

Fox - /F/ /O/ /X/

Lid - /L/ /I/ /D/

Lip - /L/ /I/ /P/

Pot - /P/ /O/ /T/

CHALLENGING:

Slid - /S/ /L/ /I/ /D/

Flip - /F/ /L/ /I/ /P/

Frog - /F/ /R/ /O/ /G/

Spot - /S/ /P/ /O/ /T/

Maps - /M/ /A/ /P/ /S/

Stop - /S/ /T/ /O/ /P/