Home » Kindergarten Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Games
Kindergarten Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Games
Before kids can read, they have to hear the sounds inside words. These five games train that ear with pictures and a voice, so a child who can’t read yet can still play on their own. There are also printable worksheets for the same skills.
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What each game practices, and how to play it without a screen
Every game here has a no-screen version you can play in the car, at dinner, or in a classroom line. The screen version is good for independent practice. The spoken version, with you, is where most of the learning happens.
Rhyme Time
The child hears a word and finds the picture that rhymes. Rhyming is one of the earliest sound skills, because the ending of a word is easy to hear.
Without a screen: play “Rhyme or not?” Say two words, like cat, hat or cat, cup. Thumbs up if they rhyme, thumbs down if they don’t. Once that’s easy, ask your child to make up a silly rhyming word for anything you point at. Made-up words like spoon, gloon count, and they show they really hear the ending.
Same First Sound
The child hears a word, like moon, and picks the picture that starts the same way. This is the step from hearing whole words to hearing a single sound inside a word.
Without a screen: play I Spy with sounds instead of letters: “I spy something that starts like mmm–mop.” Stretch the first sound when you can (more on that below). In a classroom, put three toys in a basket and ask kids to pull out the one that starts like their own name.
Odd One Out
Three pictures, two that start with the same sound. The child finds the one that doesn’t belong. It’s harder than it looks, because the child has to keep three words in their head and compare them.
Without a screen: at dinner, say three words slowly, like bus, ball, fish, and have everyone call out the one that’s different. Kids love being the one to make up the next set.
Clap the Parts
The child hears a word and claps once for each syllable, then picks the number. Mouse is one clap, pen-cil is two, ba-na-na is three, and wa-ter-mel-on is four.
Without a screen: clap everyone’s name at circle time. Then try stomping, jumping, or talking like a robot (“di-no-saur”). Putting a hand under the chin also works: the chin drops once for each syllable.
Which Letter?
This is the one game that uses letters. The child hears a word and taps the letter it starts with. It connects the sounds from the other games to the letters on the page, which is where phonics begins.
Without a screen: put three magnet letters on the fridge. Say a word and have your child grab the letter it starts with. Keep the three letters very different at first (like m, t, and b) before mixing in look-alikes such as b and d.
Phonemic awareness and phonics are not the same thing
Phonemic awareness is about sounds you hear. It happens with your eyes closed: hearing that sun and sock start the same way, or that cat has three sounds. Phonics connects those sounds to letters on a page. Kids need the first to do well at the second, so most kindergarten programs work on both side by side.
Sound skills tend to develop roughly in this order, from easiest to hardest:
Hearing separate words in a sentence
Clapping syllables
Hearing and making rhymes
Hearing the first sound in a word
Blending sounds into a word (c-a-t makes cat)
Breaking a word into all its sounds
Changing sounds to make new words (change the c in cat to h)
The games on this page cover steps 2 to 4, plus first letters. Blending and breaking words into single sounds aren’t in the games on purpose. Computer voices can’t say a single sound like /b/ cleanly, so they say “bee” or “buh” instead, and that teaches the wrong thing. Those steps are best practiced with a real voice. Say a word slowly, sound by sound, and let your child guess it.
Five things that trip kids up (and grown-ups too)
1. Letter names and letter sounds get mixed up. The letter is called “bee,” but the sound in bat is just /b/. When you practice, say the sound, not the name.
2. The extra “uh.” It’s easy to say “buh” or “muh.” Try to keep sounds clean. Some sounds can be stretched: m, s, f, l, r, and n (mmmm, ssss). These are the easiest to hear, so start I Spy games with them. Others, like b, d, t, p, k, and g, are quick bursts. Say them short and crisp.
3. Same sound, different letter.Cat and key start with the same sound even though one starts with c and the other with k. In Same First Sound, they count as a match, because the game is about what you hear. In Which Letter?, c and k never appear as choices together, so a child is never marked wrong for hearing it correctly.
4. Blends are harder than single sounds.Frog starts with /f/, but the f and r blend so closely that many five-year-olds hear them as one sound. That’s why words like frog, star, snake, and tree only appear in the rhyming and syllable games, not in the first-sound games.
5. Some words don’t clap the same for everyone. Depending on accent, fire or flower can be one syllable or two. We left words like that out of the clapping game so no child gets marked wrong for the way their family talks.
Picture word bank
These are all the picture words in the games, grouped the way the games use them. Use them for your own lessons, picture sorts, or quick oral practice.
Rhyming families
Ending
Words
-ee
bee, key, tree
-air
bear, pear, chair
-oat
boat, coat, goat
-ell
bell, shell
-at
bat, cat, hat
-ox
box, fox
-oon
moon, spoon
-ouse
mouse, house
-og
dog, frog
-ar
car, star
-ake
cake, snake
Words grouped by first sound
The slashes mean the sound, not the letter: /k/ is the sound at the start of both cat and key.
A few minutes a day beats a long session once a week. One round of a game is 10 quick questions, which is about the right length for most five-year-olds. Stop while it’s still fun.
Watch for progress you can hear, not just the stars. Can your child think of a rhyme on their own? Do they notice that their name starts like a friend’s name? That kind of noticing in everyday talk is a good sign the skill is really sticking.
A note on the voice: the games use the voice built into your phone, tablet, or computer, so there’s nothing to download. Voices sound a little different on each device. If a word sounds odd, tap the speaker again or switch on the slower voice.
