Fun At-Home Phonics Activities

Teaching phonics is one of the most effective ways to help children learn how to read. A key component of the Science of Reading, phonics instruction teaches children how to correlate sounds with letters or groups of letters, empowering them to decode and encode words. Phonics instruction is essential to helping students learn how to read and write; without this foundational reading skill, students will struggle to read with fluency and comprehension.

Unfortunately, phonics instruction also has a reputation for being boring, repetitive, and dull. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be, however. There are a wide variety of activities that can make phonics practice fun and engaging for all learners. Here are some phonics activities you can do at home.

1. Word building with magnetic letters. Do you have a magnetic refrigerator, cabinet, or cookie sheet in your home? If so, have your child use magnetic letters to practice building words. Just like with the other activities, you’ll want to choose words that have a phonics pattern the child is learning. Another activity you can have them do with magnetic letters is to make separate groups of consonants and vowels.

2. Modified phonics board games. If you have any board games at home, change the directions slightly. Every time a player takes a turn, they move their piece (and follow any directions on the game) AND they have to pull a card from a stack. Create a stack of alphabet cards with the letter name and/or sound. For more advanced students, you could have a stack of cards with words that match the skill you want to work on, and they would read the word out loud for each turn.

3. Name that sound with toys. For this activity, grab a few of your child’s toys and some other small objects around the house. Place them on the table. Have your child select one object at a time and tell you the first sound and letter in the word. If this is easy for your child (it may be easy for first grade and up), have them tell you the last sound or the vowel sound(s) instead.

4. Phonics scavenger hunt. When kids are learning a phonics skill (i.e. the sound for the letter m, or the digraph ch), it’s important for them to see examples of the skill being used in real words and books. Scavenger hunts are a fun way to accomplish this. If your child is learning the alphabet, for example, choose a letter and have them look in books, magazines – or on any type of print you might have in your home. You can also do this in the car; they can search for the letter on billboards and signs.

You can also have them look for words with the phonics pattern in the books that they’re reading and/or the books you read aloud to them. Try giving them a goal number of letters or words to find – make it a little challenging, but still attainable. They can use a piece of paper to draw a checkmark every time they find an example, or even write the word that contains the example.

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services