Children's ability to aurally discriminate between rhyming words is a fundamental phoneme segmenting skill, enabling them to segment a word's onset and its rhyme. For example, a child who can hear and recognize that the words "hen" and "pen" rhyme has begun to segment the initial letter sounds "h" and "p" from the words' middle and final sounds,"en." You can provide pictorial rhyming word matching activities by drawing or printing off pictures of objects, such as a dog, a house and a tree onto a sheet of paper. Space the pictures evenly down the left-hand side of the paper. Then, draw or print pictures of objects that rhyme with those on the left of the paper, such as a log, a mouse and a bee, in an uncorresponding order down the right-hand side of the page. Children will look for the matching pairs of rhyming words and draw a line from one object to the one whose name matches with it.
This alliteration activity can help children group the initial sounds of the words. Draw the outline of a large soup pot on a sheet of paper. Write the title "silly soup" at the top of the piece of paper and print enough copies so that each student can take one home. Instruct the children to draw or cut and stick pictures of items that all begin with a specific letter sound inside the pan outline to make a "silly soup" recipe. For example, if you have introduced the letter "d," the children might draw or stick pictures of a duck, a daisy and a dinosaur within their pan outline. Encourage children to make their recipes as imaginative and ridiculous as they wish. Ask the children to bring their pictures back to school and to read out their "silly soup" recipes.
This two-player game encourages children to practice segmenting the final consonant sounds of a word. Provide two sheets of paper per child that each contain six final consonant sounds; for example, you could write the consonants "l," "k," "g," "m," "t" and "n" on one sheet and six different consonants on the other. Write each letter inside a small circle to produce two game boards. Provide picture sheets of items that have final consonant sounds that match the letters; for example, a ball, a book, a pig, a drum, a cat and a pan have final sounds that match the letters on the first game sheet. Then, cut up the picture sheets to make cards and place them face down on a table. Have students take turns picking a card and identifying the word's final sound. Each player places a colored counter on the letter if it appears on her game sheet or places the picture card underneath the pile and waits for her next turn. The winner is the first player to cover all the final sounds on her game sheet.
Students who have the ability to segment initial, middle and final sounds to read consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC, words, can be given games that allow them to practice this skill at home. Draw or print off a simple outline of a race track on a sheet of paper and divide it into approximately 33 sections. Write a CVC word in every other section on the track and print "start" and "finish" signs. Print off enough copies so that each student has one to take home. Provide a pair of dice for each child that is limited to the numbers one, two and three. Parents should provide two sets of colored counters for the game. At home, players take turns rolling the dice and move their counter along the track. If a player lands on a CVC word, he should try to read the word. If he is successful, he moves his counter along one space, and it's his partner's turn. The winner is the player who is first to reach the "finish" line.