Help Your Child Learn to Read: Phonological Awareness Games for Preschoolers- Isolation

So far in this series, we have identified what Phonological Awareness is, why these skills are important, and what the areas of Phonological Awareness include (Rhyming, Blending, Segmenting, Isolation, Deletion, Substitution). In my two previous Phonological Awareness Games for Preschoolers posts, we have dug a little deeper into identifying specific games/materials you can utilize at home to aid in your child’s development of Rhyming and Segmenting/Blending. Today, we will focus on Isolation, which involves having students identify specific phonemes (or sounds) in words (i.e., first, middle, last).

 

Isolation: When working on the skill of Isolation with your child, you will want to target identifying sounds in all positions of CVC words (first, middle, last). For example, a child should be able to identify “b” as the beginning sound in “bat”, “a” as the middle sound, and “t” as the ending sound. It can be helpful to begin working on isolation with beginning sounds, as they tend to be easier for children to isolate when first working on this skill. There are a variety of Isolation activities that can be utilized at home, including: sound matching boards, sound clip cards, CVC word building games, or even some of the previous activities used for Phoneme Segmentation (i.e., ones that include pictures and open boxes for sounds). Once your child is able to isolate beginning, middle, and ending sounds independent of each other, then you can work to mix the sounds up and use activities that include all of the positions of words mixed together. After practice, children should be able to isolate all sounds in CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and beyond (CCVC, CVCC, etc). Once Phoneme Isolation has been mastered, then children will be able to move on to the most difficult Phonological Awareness tasks, which include Deletion and Substitution of sounds in words.

Phoneme Isolation Activities:

Beginning Sounds:

• https://www.giftofcuriosity.com/product/beginning-sounds-alphabet-clip-cards/

Middle Sounds:

• https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Phonemic-Awareness-Middle-Sounds-Matching-and-Isolation-Pack-487556?st=95ab7625e898e3b194080d0af8f38204

Final Sounds:

• https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Phonemic-Awareness-Final-Consonant-Sounds-Matching-and-Isolation-Pack-632691?st=dee2072d2e274a6cabf51aab7be005e5

Mixed Sounds:

• https://thisreadingmama.com/phoneme-memory-match-games/
• https://thisreadingmama.com/phonemic-awareness-dot-pages/
• https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/CVC-Phoneme-Segmentation-and-Spelling-Picture-Cards-3080129?st=10c2deaa53b8258a7c10c7e15ecca520
• https://thisreadingmama.com/beginning-and-ending-sounds-listening-activities/

CCVC/CVCC Isolation:

• https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Phoneme-Isolation-PowerPoint-Phonological-Awareness-Science-of-Reading-8989616?st=0c3c8cc20999fd3e26c4bd7c891961a5

 

I hope that these Phoneme Isolation Games/Activities are helpful as you work with your child to improve their Phonological Awareness skills! Stay tuned for one more follow up blog post (from me), which will provide even more Phonological Awareness Games in the remaining areas of Deletion and Substitution.