Teaching your child phonics skills is the number 1 thing you can do to help them become successful readers.
But what exactly is phonics?
Phonics is defined as “a method of teaching people to read and pronounce words by learning the sounds of letters, letter groups, and syllables.”
Great…but still…what do I do to build early reading skills?
Build Early Reading Skills with Phonics Games
Letter Identification
The first level is to teach your child that there are letters and they have names. Fun games in the car and grocery store just pointing out letters can make transition times great learning times.
Another fun activity is matching letters. This can be done with homemade cards – playing memory match with letters written on small pieces of paper. You can also get magnetic letters, print out this alphabet arc and let you child match the letters.
Letter/Sound Match
The next step is to help your child understand those letters all make sounds. One fun way to do this is by having a letter of the week and creating your own phonics tubs. Write the letter of the week on the outside of a bag and collect items that start with that sound.
Rhyming
This stage will drive you a bit batty, but it’s definitely a great stage.
Children need to understand that words can have the same ending sound – or rhyme. You can do a treasure hunt through the house – I found a “cat” can you find a “bat”? Or again in the car or waiting at the doctor’s office, play Rhyme I Spy. You can also buy fun Match It Puzzles where they have to find the pictures of items that rhyme to complete the puzzle.
These skills will all help to get your child ready for Kindergarten and build those early reading skills that are so necessary for life long learners.
Win a Phonics Game
To help you build those Kindergarten Readiness Skills, I’m going to give one lucky reader this Big Box of Words game.
What’s your child’s favorite phonics game?
This super cool. I think Elena is ready for it.
Camren is just now getting to where he is interested in letters and reading. We practice tracing the letters in books with his finger, Hop on Pop is the best one for us right now.
Is 3 too early to start rhyming? I am working on phonics now – it’s helped us identify speech pattern irregularities. This is a very helpful post – I entered…hope to win! 🙂
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Nope…3 is perfect, but I’ll warn you…they start saying seriously random things. When Evan was little he was in the rhyming phase and was shouting “cart – fart” through Hobby Lobby.
My son has a puzzle where the words connect to the picture. He really likes it.
My daughter aways asks how to spell words. We tell her the sounds the letters make
My son just turned 3, and he is just getting started.
This would be awesome! Thank you! 🙂
We love rhyming together. We also like playing hangman.
My nephew loves to be read to and follow the words.
My son is just starting to get into phonics, so we don’t have any games for him yet. But I think he would be ready for this one! Thanks for the giveaway! 🙂
We had this little set that had audio tapes and flashcards. It was pretty cool.
I don’t know any phonics games to teach my son yet. Still learning. But he is just starting to show interest in words.
We have a curious George phonics game she reakly likes. Shes hust getting into learning site words. This would be an amazing Xmas gift!
She’s a toddler so she doesn’t have a favorite phonics game yet.
They love any kind of learning game they can get their hands on!
Its a flash card game the grandmother gave him
We love the fundations program
We do not have a phonics game
We like the superwhy reading game
We read books and play rhyming games
My child’s favorite phonics game is the Hooked On Phonics Classroom Edition app.
We’re just starting out so we follow the words as the storybooks are read and also sound out letters in the shorter words. Thank you for this great giveaway,,,
Sometimes I use Scrabble pieces for the kids to make words with.
We have sort of made up our own phonics game where we try to spell out words with chalk by sounding them out.
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No board type game. We just make games up and use flash cards
Other than flash cards, we don’t really have any phonics games… no, wait, we have letter tiles and fish.
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My oldest likes letter match puzzles.
I have a grandson that this would be perfect for. Thanks for the opportunity.
We are just starting out, and don’t have any favorite games yet. We need some soon, to prepare my stubborn little one for kindergarten.
I don’t think my grandson actually has a favorite phonics game.
My 2 year old granddaughter loves to read books (or listen) and tries to repeat what she hears.
My son just started preschool in the fall, and I’m sure he’s played some phonics games in school, but has not at home. I think he would really like it though. We read a book or two every night before bed and he loves it.
Our kids have never played a phonics games
We are just starting to get into it now! We haven’t played many games yet!
He loves flash cards a his phonics book with rewards
My son never had any phonics game yet! I would love to win this awesome prize for him!
Thank You for the chance
My child does not have a favorite Phonics game yet since we just started working on Phonics with her.
I make flash cards to help my 6 yr old niece learn words. Thank you for the chance 🙂
As a retired preschool teacher and a literacy specialist I’m not sure my grandson has just one favorite game. We play many word games and read many books that encourage phonetics. We have quite a few matching cards that I have made. For example he is given the letter G and has to pick up a card that has maybe a goat on it as a match. He is learning so fast right now that this would be perfect for him in the next few months.