Phonics is the building blocks of reading. Learning and mastering phonics takes practice – and lots of it.
Drilling with flash cards or trying to read full books for early readers can be difficult and frustrating. Incorporating phonics into every day play with fun activities is easy for kids to learn without the tedious direct instruction.
Phonics can be incorporated into movement, crafts, music, nature and just about any daily activity or routine for kids.
But why is phonics is so important? And what is phonics exactly?
What is phonics?
Phonemes make up individual sounds in the English language. Phonics teaches the phonemes or individual sounds and teaches the relationship between the common letter to sound relationships. Readers can then use the sounds for each letters to for common letter patterns to decode unfamiliar words successfully.
Effortless decoding means early readers are able to shift their focus from trying to read or decode words to actually comprehending what they are reading instead.
What are the 5 principles of phonics?
In 2000, the National Reading Panel report outlined five essential components of effective reading instruction for young children:
Phonics is key because breaking words into their constituent sounds helps kids understand and build their literacy skills, bit by bit. Phonics activities like the ones here will help build reading fluency in young students.
How do you teach phonics?
What are the 44 phonics sounds?
Note that the 44 sounds or phonemes have multiple spellings. Only the most common sounds have been included below.
- 20 Vowel Sounds. 6 Short Vowels. a. e. i. o. u. oo u. cat. leg. sit. top. rub. book. put. 5 Long Vowels. ai ay. ee ea. ie igh. oe ow. oo ue. paid. tray. bee. beat. pie. high. toe. flow. moon. …
- 24 Consonant Sounds.
25 activities to teach & practice phonics
- Play
- Songs/Music
- Sand letters
- big foam letters
- coloring pages
- pointing out letters or words with letters
- modeling
- reading
- matching
- while eating
- in the car
- in sand
- with chalk
- with blocks
- tracing
- charts
- bingo
- letters that they can move
- phonics cubes
- playdough letters
- fly swatter
- water balloons
- phonics pong
- cvc puzzles
- board games