As I mentioned in my last post on phonemic awareness, phonemic awareness is the understanding of how sounds work. These skills are auditory and should not be taught with the visuals of words, until the skill is mastered auditorily.
Today we will work on listening to words that begin with the same beginning sounds. Here is a link to a Jack Hartmann video on beginning sounds… my class loves Jack Hartmann. I hope you do too.
No Zoo For You
For the activity you will need animal pictures or toys. (you could do this same activity with types of foods or other categories of items, just change the title)

I decided to group my animals by typical location (forest, zoo, pond and farm).
Have your child tell you the name of all three animals. The then have to determine which of the three animals does not start with the same beginning sound. They remove that animal and say “No zoo for you!” Continue doing this until you have determined which animals can and cannot fit in each zoo.
If this is too hard, then say each animal word for your child putting emphasis on the beginning sound (/b/-bear, /ch/chipmunk, /b/bird) which two start with /b/?
If this is really easy? Then have your child think of other animals that could fit in the same zoo. bear, bird, butterfly, buck, etc…
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