40+ Phonics Activities & Games for Kids Learning to Read

Phonics is a way kids can decode letters and groups of letters making it easier to learn to read.  They can learn how certain letters/groups sound and then figure out larger words from the smaller parts combined.

Phonics Consonant & Vowel Sounds

Learning letter sounds is the first step in phonics.  Listening to hear how each letter - both vowel and consonant - sounds by itself and recognizing that some letters make a different sound when paired with other letters.  For example there is a short "a" sound at the beginning of the word, apple.

Phonics Blends

When common two and three letter combinations are together they form a blend.  A sound that is only made with that group.  Learning these common blends makes reading much easier.  A common two letter blend example would be the sound that b + e make together forming the word, "be".  A three letter blend example includes many common three letter words like cat, bat, hat, sat, rat and so forth.

Phonics Twin-Consonant & Two Consonant Blends at Word End

When two consonants are paired together, they often make the same sound as the original one.  The word "sell" sounds just like you would expect the to pronounce "sel" if it were a word.  Common two consonant blends that appear at the end of a word examples are ck, th, and nd.

Plural Words

Phonics can help decode when to use an "s", "es" or a different form of a word for its plural.

Phonics Digraphs

Digraphs are when two consonants combine to create a new, unexpected sound. An example of this is how "ch" sounds differently in the words "chat" and "much".

Phonics & Sight Words

Since no matter how much phonics you learn, there are still words you can't sound out, there is a big component of sight word learning.  When kids learn common words that don't follow the phonics rules, it makes reading simpler.