Phonogram Games for Kids
Everyone enjoys a good game. It could be as simple as tic-tac-toe or as complex as Monopoly. Turn reading into a game with your child, and take the stress off while targetting tricky sounds in isolation.
Choose a game:
Rhyming: Start your games in a simple fashion by just thinking of and saying rhyming words. If you start a list, you can ask the child to add a word that rhymes. “Now, bow, how, plow, chow.” Your child may repeat these words, or may add a word like “cow”. Make these lists as long as you can. You can even mix phonemes. “Owl, foul, bowel”. At this point, you are simply isolating sounds.
Tic-tac-toe: Draw your grid. Fill in each space with a word that uses your target phoneme. If your phoneme is ai, use single syllable words like paint, faint, nail, rail, aim, rain, stain, gait, wait. If you are comparing two or more spellings of a phoneme, (ai, ay, a_e), vary the spellings in the spaces. If your child struggles with these different spellings, spell or underline the phonemes in different colors. (Keep all the same spellings in one color, but change for another spelling of the same phoneme.)
Path Following Games: Find a game board, download one from online, or draw your own. In each space, write a word or leave it blank. Play the game as you normally would (use a dice or the color card like Candy Land would). If you land on a word, read it. If you land on a blank space, write a word. Keep the phonemes at a minimum or with slight variations (like you would with tic-tac-toe above).
Hot Lava: Following the same rules of keeping phonemes consistent, write words on cards and spread them all over the floor. Help your child get from point A to point B by giving them clues about the words they have to read on the cards so they can move from stone to stone and cross the lava.
Would You Rather: Try putting up two different phonemes. Ask your child “would you rather” questions, using words with the two different phonemes: “Would you rather spoil your appetite with candy or paint a masterpiece worth millions?” Your child taps the phoneme that is found in their answer: oi or ai.
Storytelling: Tell a story. For spelling: in each sentence add a word with the targeted phoneme. After each sentence, ask your child to spell that word. For reading: ask your child to use all the words to make a story after your child has read through the list at least once and is familiar with the words and their meanings.
Memory: Write words on one side of index cards with a pencil. Make two index cards per word. Remember, you can isolate the sound or spelling of a particular phoneme by using a different color or underlining that part of a word. Flip all the words face down. In each turn, flip two cards face up and read the words. If they match, take the pair and go again. If they don’t match, turn cards face down again, and let the next player have a turn. This is also a good way to incorporate sight words.
I’m Going Camping and I’m Bringing a … : Every round, you begin, “I’m going camping and I’m bringing a (any word that has a short o sound).” After your turn, the other players repeat this phrase and insert a word, hoping to go camping with you. If the word does not have a short o sound, you can let them know they would be really fun to camp with, but they can’t come with you yet. If they bring a word that has the short o sound, they definitely can come with you. Do a few more rounds to make sure the players have the sound you are looking for.
Word Association: Just for fun! This can be played with just two people or a crowd. One person starts. They say just one word, like “blue”. The next person says the first thing that comes to their mind, like “sky”. The next person says the first thing that comes to their mind, like “clouds”. And so on, round and round for as long as you’d like. This game is not about isolating phonemes; it is about just getting words to be fun and to bring pictures to mind. If your child asks you about the meaning of a specific word, give a definition. Pictures cannot be built with meaningless words. After you give the definition, repeat your word. If this game moves into a conversation, great! Go with it. There is no right or wrong length for this game.
Now, get your game face on and get playing!