5 Fun Easy Reading Games to Set Your Toddler Up for Reading Success! – Phonemic Awareness Games for Young Kids

Do you want to set your toddler or young child up for success in reading?

Today, we’re sharing five fun and simple games that help develop a crucial foundational skill—one that comes before your child officially learns to read.

The best part? Your child won’t even realize they’re building an essential skill! These games feel like playtime with mom, dad, a teacher, or even a grandparent.

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What is This KEY Foundational Skill in Reading?

So, what is that key foundational skill that sets children up for success in reading, and can be developed from a very early age, even before reading instruction officially begins?

It’s the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds that that blend together. This skill is called Phonemic Awareness, and it’s all about the ability to hear and identify sounds in words.

For example, the word “mat” is made up of three individual sounds: /m/ /a/ /t/

In this case, the number of sounds matches the number of letters. However, that’s not always the case.

In the word “ship (/sh/ /i/ /p/), we have three sounds but four letters.

Children don’t naturally develop this skill on their own—it needs to be taught explicitly.

Why is Phonemic Awareness so Important?

Research has shown that phonemic awareness is the strongest predictor of future reading success, but also of reading failure.

In fact, children who struggle with reading often have weak phonemic awareness skills.

 “The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness).” – Lyon, 1995

 “The ability to hear and manipulate phonemes plays a causal role in the acquisition of beginning reading skills.” – Smith, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1998

So, let’s dive into the games that will help strengthen this crucial skill!

Game #1: Actions and Sounds Game

Simple game that literally needs no prep.

Pick two sounds, such as /a/ and /s/, and assign an action to each.

• If you say /a/, your child jumps.
• If you say /s/, your child claps.

Start with sounds in isolation, then move to words that start with those sounds (e.g., “apple” for /a/ and “snake” for /s/).

If your child is ready, challenge them to listen for the sounds in any position within words, like mat (middle) or bus (end).

Do you want to take the game a level further—what if a word contains both target sounds? For example, in mats, your child would jump for /a/ and clap for /s/.

Game #2: Play “I spy”

Again, this game needs no prep!

This classic game helps children identify initial sounds in words.

Say, “I spy with my little eye something starting with /m/” Then, you child tries to guess the object.

If this is too hard, limit the choices to some objects that you have in front of you/

You can use toys, household objects, or Montessori-style language objects!

Game #3: The “cross-the-river” game

For this game, you are going to take a sheet of paper and draw a river. Then you are going to pick different objects and toys from around the house, and pick a sound. For instance /s/

If the toy or object starts with our target sound, it can cross the river. If it doesn’t, the toy can’t cross to the other side of the river.

Watch me doing a demonstration of this game in action in the video below. NOTE: I demonstrated using a beautiful diorama, because I just happened to have one, but you don’t need it! You can just use a sheet of paper, a draw a river in the middle!

This is really a nice game at this stage, and it’s a lot of fun for kids!

I think your child will truly enjoy this one.

If you are playing this game in a classroom setting with pre-schoolers… even more fun!

Game #4: Talk-in-code Game

We have different levels for this one.

At first, we are just going to take words from our everyday speaking to our child, and include oral segmenting into our sentences.

For example, if you wanted to ask your child to pass you the milk, you could say: “Mike, p-ass me the m-ilk.” The words pass and milk are sounded out slowly.

If you are reading a nursery rhyme, such as “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,” mix in segmenting on some words in the rhyme randomly. For instance, you could say: “J-ack and J-ill went up the h-ill to f-etch a pale of water.”

We simply need to make an effort to separate the first letter sounds from a few words.

As your child begins to grasp the concept of individual sounds making up words, you can slowly increase the difficulty by breaking down each word further. For example: “J-a-ck and J-i-ll went up the h-i-ll.” Could your child understand what you said?

For a fun twist and to add movement to the game, you can also use action words, where your child has to say the word and do the action!

For instance, you can say “s-it,” and your child has to say “sit,” and, then, do the action.

 Or “r-un,” and your kid has to say “run,” and, then, run.

As your child gets better at this, you’d go sound by sound, so instead of s-it, you would say s-i-t, and instead of run, you would say run.

Watch how to go about it in this video!

Game #5: Walk-to-the-sound Game

Place different object flashcards around the house, and ask your child to walk to the words that start with a specific sound, and give them back to you.

For instance, say: “the sound I am looking for is /h/,” and she’ll give you back flashcards like the ones below: hay, hat, hamburger, helicopter, heart, hippopotamus, house, hot dog.

This game is a lot fun as well!

It can also be appropriate for a classroom setting as well, with modifications.

For instance, by splitting up the class in groups, and giving each group a different target sound, so it doesn’t end up being too chaotic!

Conclusion

I hope you found inspiration in these games.

Doing this type of games and activities will little by little help your child develop the crucial insight that words made up by individual sounds (phonemic awareness skills).

This will give your child a head start for when reading instruction officially begins!

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