Your young learners will love this set of simple board games that build phonemic awareness!
Phonemic awareness.
What does it mean, anyway?
It’s a scary-sounding phrase, but it’s really not that complicated. It has to do with hearing and manipulating sounds in words. While some phonemic awareness activities may be used alongside letters, most of them don’t.
If you ask a child to tell you the beginning sound of sandwich, and s/he says sssss, that’s great! Isolating beginning sounds is one key component of phonemic awareness – and it’s exactly what we’re going to focus on with this set of games.
We have six children, and our oldest four developed phonemic awareness without a lot of intentionality on my part. I read to them often, and we did a variety of early learning activities – but I didn’t have to teach explicitly phonemic awareness. For all of them (now 10, 9, 7, and 5) phonemic awareness just came.
This hasn’t been true of my Three (almost four). Thankfully, she’s catching on with the playful activities and games that I’ve been sharing over the past few months.
How to play the games
- Print and cut apart the dot cards at the end of the file.
- Grab playing pieces.
- Take turns moving along the board by drawing a dot card and moving that number of spaces.
- When you land on a space, say the picture’s name and its beginning sound.
When my Three landed on a picture, she often stretched that initial sound instead of isolating it. For example, “Milk. Mmmmmilk.” Or “Sandwich. Ssssandwich.” Fine by me! My goal was for her to hear and identify that beginning sound – and she was doing it!
Sometimes she was frustrated and didn’t want to try. Tiger was hard for her. Can you guess why?
It’s because /t/ is not a continuous sound. Mmmmmmm and Sssssss were the other two sounds featured in the first game and were much easier.
When she hit a roadblock, she told me to do it. So I did.
“Hmm… is it /m/? Mmm, mmm, miger! No? Is it /g/? /G/, /g/, geiger?” After I was a little silly she was ready to get back in the game.
I chose to use those dot cards because my Three isn’t real quick at knowing the dots on a die yet. Another reason is that it’s a short game board. If your learner rolls a six three times, the game is over!
The dot cards gave her just enough turns without a single game overwhelming her.
After we played one game, she was willing to play one more. Each game adds a new letter’s sound and bumps one sound off. So for example, the first game featured the sounds of m, s, and t. The second game features the sounds of s, t, and a.
I would say that she isolated (or stretched) the beginning sound correctly about 75% of the time. By the time we were finishing (after about 5-10 minutes), she was tired and gave up quickly. Ax (pictured above) was too hard.
So what do you think? Will these work for your learners? I hope you enjoy the 25 free games you can get in the download. These games come in color, but feel free to print in grayscale if you’d like.
More resources!
© 2018, Anna G. All rights reserved.
Elisabeth A Kachline says
January 21, 2018 at 11:06 pmThese are fabulous. I have 3 students that will greatly benefit from these activities. Thanks so much!
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:37 pmYou’re very welcome, Elisabeth! 🙂
Nana says
January 11, 2019 at 7:39 amWonderful
Thanks a lot
Jan says
January 22, 2018 at 6:29 amThank you, these are fantastic!
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:38 pmI’m so glad you can use them, Jan!
Abbie Turner says
January 22, 2018 at 7:35 amLove Love Love these!!! Thank you so much for all you do for our students and us!! You are awesome!!! Love you
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:38 pmThanks so much, Abbie – you’re such a great cheerleader! 🙂
Shannon James says
January 22, 2018 at 1:58 pmThank you for sharing these wonderful games.
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:38 pmYou’re welcome, Shannon!
Marg says
January 22, 2018 at 4:03 pmYour resources are amazing! They are so great to use in my intervention groups and the students love them.
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:38 pmI’m SO happy to hear that, Marg!
Karen Kerns says
January 23, 2018 at 5:12 amThank you so much. I have a group of kiddos this year who are really struggling with phonemic awareness and this is perfect for them to practice!
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:38 pmHurray – I’m glad these will come in handy!
Teresa says
January 23, 2018 at 2:05 pmThese look awesome. Can’t wait to try them out. Thank you!
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:38 pmI hope you get a chance to use them, Teresa!
annamaria says
January 23, 2018 at 2:13 pmthank you very much for sharing this useful game
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:39 pmYou’re welcome, Annamaria!
Shelly says
January 24, 2018 at 2:13 pmThese games are just what my students are needing! Thank you for sharing your talent and expertise!
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:39 pmI’m so glad you can use them, Shelly!
TWan says
January 24, 2018 at 2:20 pmThese are great and fun. Thanks for sharing.
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:39 pmYou’re welcome, Twan!
Anne says
January 24, 2018 at 6:52 pmThese are great games – fun with learning! Thank-you for sharing. What is the name of the bag/shoulder bag/satchel in the “dmp” game group?
Anna G says
January 24, 2018 at 7:36 pmPurse. 🙂
Helen says
January 26, 2018 at 4:37 amJust added an ESL student and your timing is perfect. Thank you so much..will have other students play with her to review their skills as well as help her.
Anna G says
January 27, 2018 at 7:39 pmHurray – I’m so glad these will work for her!
Laurie says
January 28, 2018 at 8:18 amThese are great. Wonderful for those who need to build vocabulary as well. I have 2 students who will benefit just from labeling the pictures!
Anna G says
February 3, 2018 at 4:53 pmThank you so much for the kind words, Laurie!
Jo says
February 1, 2018 at 8:18 pmI do home school with my kids and your games are just great. The kids are learning and having fun. Thanks so much.
Anna G says
February 3, 2018 at 4:51 pmYou’re welcome, Jo!
Tammy says
February 10, 2018 at 6:07 amThank you so much for sharing your beautiful resources! I have used many of your games and readers to support the children in my grade 1 class.
You are a very talented lady!💕
Anna G says
February 10, 2018 at 7:40 amYou’re very welcome, Tammy! Thank you so much for the kind words!
Sheena says
February 10, 2018 at 10:02 amI can’t thank you enough for sharing these resources with everyone. I work with Deaf and Hard of Hearing students and these have been fantastic. They are engaging, visual and help me teach difficult concept for students that are getting used to hearing the sounds. (some have not have the benefit of hearing these sounds from birth) . Plus with these activities being free I am able to incorporate many different activities into my sessions when I have no real budget for resources – Thanks : )
Anna G says
February 11, 2018 at 8:16 amThank you for introducing yourself, Sheena! Thank you so much for the kind words!
Kate Richmond says
May 21, 2018 at 8:08 amFirst I wanted to say thank you for all your awesome resources. My son loves them and looks forward to working with me daily. I also just wanted to make you aware that I believe there may be a mistake of game board #5. There is a photo of what looks like an Ax or Hatchet and the letters for this game are d,m & p. According to the picture key it should be a dot. I just had my son identify the letter it did start with and we moved on with no issue but I wanted you to be aware. Thanks again for all you do.
Anna G says
June 2, 2018 at 1:58 pmAh, you’re right! Fixing mistakes in my freebies usually takes me a long time… but I will put this on my long term to do list.
Dawn Welke says
September 2, 2018 at 11:36 amThank you for all of your resources. I teach in a one room school and have a third grader that came to us recently but must have missed some important reading skills. She struggles with her reading. So, I am going to go back and use some of your resources and see if we can’t get her the things she needs to be a successful reader.
Isabela M says
September 25, 2018 at 10:29 pmThank you very much for your help! Excellent material.
Anna G says
October 1, 2018 at 4:22 pmYou’re welcome, Isabela!
Jelena Grujic says
January 11, 2019 at 12:07 amThis is fabulous!!! Thank you so much!! Wishing you all the best!!
Anna G says
January 11, 2019 at 4:10 pmYou’re welcome, Jelena!
Sally Leech says
January 11, 2019 at 4:41 amMy students are going to love these games.Thanks Anna
Anna G says
January 11, 2019 at 4:10 pmYou’re very welcome, Sally!
Heather says
January 11, 2019 at 9:18 amThese games are awesome! MY favorite part was that for x you included pictures and the instructions to say the end of the word thank you.
Anna G says
January 12, 2019 at 11:54 amYou’re welcome, Heather!
Debbie Phillips says
January 11, 2019 at 7:40 pmYou are so generous! I am an ESL teacher in a very poor school . I just had a 1st grade teacher ask me for R controlled vowel sounds to help a kiddo. THEN I had a Kindergarten teacher ask me to work with her kiddos on phonics SOUNDs. YEP this does the trick !!
Thank you
Debbie Phillips
Racine, WI
Anna G says
January 23, 2019 at 7:17 amThank you for your kind words, Debbie!
Lori says
January 16, 2019 at 8:26 amI just have to tell you how happy your freebies make me!! I work for a non-profit educational program to help get at-risk 4-year-olds become ready for kindergarten. We have incorporated SO MANY of your free worksheets and activities in our lessons! Thank you so much for sharing your hard work! It is truly appreciated!
Anna G says
January 23, 2019 at 7:12 amYou’re very welcome, Lori!