Tired of playing “I Spy?”  Try “What Letter Makes This Sound?”  It is an easy while-you-wait game that you can play in the doctor’s office or restaurant.  One person makes a letter sound and the other person guesses the letter.  Easy.

Adult- “What letter makes this sound?” (make /b/ sound)

Kid- “B!!”

Then switch it up and let the kid ask the question.  Or make it more difficult and ask “Which two letters together make the /ch/ sound?” Or how about which two letters can both make the /s/ sound?”

This game should really be called the Phoneme Game.  (That’s a fancy way to say the individual speech sounds that make up a language. Also- I have been reading too many Fancy Nancy books.)  Phonemes are the building blocks of words.  Phonemic awareness will help kids “sound out” words in their reading and writing.  This game will also give kids who need help with speech an opportunity practice saying phonemes.

A warning from my college reading professor:  Be careful to only say one phoneme at a time.  It’s more difficult than you think.  For example, people have a tendency to say “wa” (making a /w/ and /a/ sounds) instead of the pure /w/ sound.