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 – 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.
Elisabeth A Kachline says
These are fabulous. I have 3 students that will greatly benefit from these activities. Thanks so much!
Anna G says
You’re very welcome, Elisabeth! 🙂
Nana says
Wonderful
Thanks a lot
Jan says
Thank you, these are fantastic!
Anna G says
I’m so glad you can use them, Jan!
Abbie Turner says
Love Love Love these!!! Thank you so much for all you do for our students and us!! You are awesome!!! Love you
Anna G says
Thanks so much, Abbie – you’re such a great cheerleader! 🙂
Shannon James says
Thank you for sharing these wonderful games.
Anna G says
You’re welcome, Shannon!
Marg says
Your resources are amazing! They are so great to use in my intervention groups and the students love them.
Anna G says
I’m SO happy to hear that, Marg!
Karen Kerns says
Thank 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
Hurray – I’m glad these will come in handy!
Teresa says
These look awesome. Can’t wait to try them out. Thank you!
Anna G says
I hope you get a chance to use them, Teresa!
annamaria says
thank you very much for sharing this useful game
Anna G says
You’re welcome, Annamaria!
Shelly says
These games are just what my students are needing! Thank you for sharing your talent and expertise!
Anna G says
I’m so glad you can use them, Shelly!
TWan says
These are great and fun. Thanks for sharing.
Anna G says
You’re welcome, Twan!
Anne says
These 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
Purse. 🙂
Helen says
Just 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
Hurray – I’m so glad these will work for her!
Laurie says
These 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
Thank you so much for the kind words, Laurie!
Jo says
I 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
You’re welcome, Jo!
Tammy says
Thank 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
You’re very welcome, Tammy! Thank you so much for the kind words!
Sheena says
I 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
Thank you for introducing yourself, Sheena! Thank you so much for the kind words!
Kate Richmond says
First 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
Ah, 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
Thank 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
Thank you very much for your help! Excellent material.
Anna G says
You’re welcome, Isabela!
Jelena Grujic says
This is fabulous!!! Thank you so much!! Wishing you all the best!!
Anna G says
You’re welcome, Jelena!
Sally Leech says
My students are going to love these games.Thanks Anna
Anna G says
You’re very welcome, Sally!
Heather says
These 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
You’re welcome, Heather!
Debbie Phillips says
You 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
Thank you for your kind words, Debbie!
Lori says
I 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
You’re very welcome, Lori!
Nicole Johnson says
I really am deeply moved by your commitment and generosity. Thank you.
As I teach my 4 year old to hear, these will make the process much more enjoyable. Thank you.
Kristina says
Nice! Do you have a set for blends?
Peggy Henry says
Thank you so much!! I have enjoyed so many of your ideas and activities. Thanks for sharing your talent through your activities. I share your website address with my friends, so they can see all your wonderful materials, and ideas. Thanks Peg
Sylvia says
Your good work is going round the globe to meet the needs of our young generation. Your freebies have been useful to me and my kids in school here in Nigeria. You are really amazing. Love you.
Mary says
I work with a 7 y.o. child who is intellectually disabled ..these cards are great and reinforcing which sounds. I love the dot cards as they are different than a dice and as 3 is the highest number the game doesn’t go too quickly. Plus she gets to reinforce her number recognition counting the dots.
Love all the letter resources they are really helpful.
Miri says
These games are perfect!! Thank you so much for sharing this.
Wahidah says
Tq so much for the sharing.. Love it n would love to try it with my son..
mary says
Thanks so much for your generosity! My students love the colourful pictures and a game is always appealing.
Carmen says
This is awesome!! Thank you!!
Gina Karber says
Thank you so very much for all the useful games! My RTI group has benefitted greatly!
Alice Boyer says
These are amazing. My students (and granddaughter love them. Thank you so much.
Mariaelena says
I love all of your resources, but I’m having a difficult time printing these games, “Say the Sound”. I’ve downloaded them without a problem, however, when I tried printing them the game board is printed with a black background rather the white. Do you know why I might be having this issue?
Kate Dowling says
Hi Mariaelena!
This is Kate, Anna’s assistant.
Yes, this is a common problem with an easy solution. Please be sure you always open and print from within Adobe Reader. If you don’t already have the latest version of this free program on your computer, you can get it for free here: https://get.adobe.com/reader/
All the best!