Do You Know the Secret to Learning to Read?

Spoiler Alert! It’s not about teaching letters. It’s all about hearing sounds!

Do you know one of the best ways to help your child be ready to read?

Play with lots and lots of words and sounds! Long before your preschooler can read words… They must first hear the individual sounds in words.

Learning to read matters more about what your child hears, and less about what they see on a printed page. It’s about sounds, not letters.

Building strong sound awareness skills in your child’s preschool years is the key to unlocking their ability to decode words and became successful confident readers tomorrow.​​​​​​​

The ability to hear, notice, and play with the sounds in spoken language is called Phonological Awareness. It’s an umbrella term that includes many smaller sound skills such as:

• Rhyming
• Alliteration
• Sentence segmentation
• Syllable counting and blending
• Onset and rime (c-at, m-at)
• Phonemic awareness (individual sound manipulation)

Kids with strong phonological awareness can:

• Recognize rhyming pattens in words (cat / hat)
• Clap beats (syllables) in words (bask-et-ball = 3 claps)
• Identify beginning sounds (sun starts with /s/)
• Blend sounds together (/c/ /a/ /t/ → cat)
• Break words apart into individual sounds (dog → /d/ /o/ /g/)


What Phonological Awareness Is NOT

Since this can often confuse parents who want to prepare their child to be ready to read, let’s look at what phonological awareness in NOT.

Phonological awareness is not:

• ❌ Teaching letter names
• ❌ Teaching letter sounds
• ❌ Reading words from a page
• ❌ Memorizing sight words
• ❌ Flashcards

Those are phonics-driven skills.

Phonological awareness happens through listening and speaking. If you can do the activity with your eyes closed, it’s likely a phonological awareness activity.

5-Minute Sound Play Ideas

Did you know it takes just a few playful minutes each day to build these powerful reading readiness skills? Here are 5 activities you can try that take 5 minutes or less but will pay huge dividends in building your child’s phonological awareness.

 Sing or say nursery rhymes (builds rhyming skills)
👏 Clap syllables of words at dinner (helps break words into smaller chunks so they can decode)
🚗 Play “I Spy” something that begins with (a specific sound) (makes letter-sound connections)
😂 Make silly rhyming words (isolates beginning sounds of words)
🐍 Stretch out words like “s-s-s-s-s-sun” (separates words into individual sounds)

⭐ Why Phonological Awareness Matters

Sound awareness opens the door to decoding. A child with strong phonological awareness can:
✔ Learn phonics more easily
✔ Blend sounds to read
✔ Break sounds apart to spell
✔ Feel confident when reading begins

The Three Power P’s of Reading

Did you know there are actually three Power P’s all kids need to read? Two of these Power P’s: phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are both developed in the preschool years through listening and speaking.