Working on Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to understand that language is made up of smaller elements (words, syllables, phonemes) and to develop the skill to consciously manipulate these elements or segments.

We are going to work on phonetic awareness through the knowledge and learning of vowel phonemes using the vowel houses material. And with the syllable houses, we are going to focus on working on syllabic awareness.

These houses are very motivating for learning by playing with our children, in addition to contributing to the initiation of literacy skills, the expansion of vocabulary, and the development of fine motor skills, oral expression, and attention.

We can start the game from three years old with the uppercase vowel houses and gradually introduce uppercase consonants at four years old. From 5 years old (always taking into account the developmental level of our children) we can play with all the lowercase letter houses.

Before the game, we will show the image cards and name the image that appears, paying special attention to how the starting letter or syllable sounds. We will also show the five houses and see who lives there.

To start the game, we will distribute the image cards to the children and stick the houses in a visible place for everyone (for example, on the whiteboard). Then, in order, each child will say aloud the name of the image on their card and place it in the corresponding house. As visual support, we can simultaneously write the words on the whiteboard as they say them for those who may have more difficulty at the beginning. The game ends when all five houses have been completed correctly. I love to make mistakes when it's my turn because of the anticipation it generates when they realize the teacher made a mistake, and I remind them that it's okay to make mistakes, that these things happen to all of us.

Once we have practiced the game in a large group, the material will be placed in the letter corner so they can play with it in small groups or individually.

We can play however we can think of, at school and at home to help our little ones in their introduction to literacy, as it is an educational material with many possibilities for implementation.

I leave you a video so you can see an example of how to use the material. Also, by clicking on Vowel Houses, you can find the vowel houses resource and in the store, you have other houses to learn different syllables, such as the P-syllable houses, L-syllable houses,...