A few weeks ago, I desperately needed 20 minutes to finish putting the washing away. 

It had been sitting on my bedroom floor for days, and after spending all morning looking for a particular T-shirt my daughter just HAD to wear and eventually finding it in the pile, I knew it had to go. 

So, I gave my daughter a wad of post-it notes and asked her to stick them to things around the house beginning with the same letter as her name.

I needed time to myself to force myself through the worst household job known to man, and wanted to fit in some learning - two birds, one stone kind of deal.

This game is one of the simplest to resource and explain, but one of the best for building phonological awareness. It feels like a game to her, but it’s building the foundations she'll need before she ever reads a word.

Except that's not what most parents are being told to focus on.

Spend five minutes on Instagram, and you'd think every pre-schooler should already know their letter sounds before they've even started Reception. 

Flashcards on the fridge. Tracing activity before breakfast. Proud videos of toddlers reciting the alphabet before they can do up their own coat.

No wonder so many of you feel like you're already behind.

You're not.

Children don't learn to read because they've memorised a pile of letter sounds. They learn to read because their brains have built the ability to hear, notice, remember and play with the sounds in spoken language.

That's phonological awareness. And without it, your child will have gaps in their learning.

I’ve put the skills your child needs before phonics into a checklist; click here to download it for free.

Also, if you have any questions about phonological awareness and why it has to come before formal phonics, I’ve probably answered it on my Phase 1 phonics parents' guide.

Today I want to show you my go-to phonological awareness games and what this can actually look like at home.

Why phonological awareness matters 

Our kids are growing up differently from how we did.

Less time playing out with a group of other children. Fewer long car journeys filled with terrible singing. Fewer nursery rhymes passed down without anyone even trying. More time in front of a screen that talks at them rather than with them.

That's not a parenting failure. It's just where we have ended up under the weight of the society we live in now.

But spoken language only develops through back-and-forth (listening, talking, singing, rhyming, playing with sounds). 

The more of that a child gets, the stronger the foundations for reading later on. Once those skills are in place, everything else builds on top.

And the good news is you don't need a resource cupboard or a spare hour. 

Most of the best phonological awareness activities can be slotted into what you are already doing - the walk to nursery, the tidy-up before tea, the ten minutes before bath.

Here are my go-to's, ride or die, phonological awareness games:

1. The Name Hunt

Our most-played game, by a mile.

Hand your child a pile of Post-it notes and send them hunting round the house for anything that starts with the same sound as their name.

My daughter, Rose, might come back with:

• rug
• rabbit
• remote
• ruler

Or go bigger and find one object for every sound in the whole name:

• R – rug
• O – orange
• S – spoon
• E – elephant lego

The post-it is the trick, by the way. Without it, you end up wading through a pile of random objects dumped in the middle of the lounge. With it, they stick a note on each find and give you the full guided tour when they're done, and your house stays roughly the shape it started in.

What they're practising is listening carefully for the first sound in a word - a skill they will need when learning phonics, reading, and writing!

2. Sound Out Songs

I make these up constantly. Usually because I want something tidied away and diplomacy has failed.

My go-to tune, of course, is The Wheels on the Bus, because of the repeated rhythm - the words will just fall off your tongue, trust me. For example:

"Can you put away your t-oy-s, t-oy-s, t-oy-s? Can you put away your t-oy-s, or Mummy’s brain will explode?"

(That last line tells you exactly how the day's going 😂)

Notice how I’m sounding out the word toys, so my daughter has to blend it.

t-oy-s. c-u-p. b-e-d. s-o-ck.

She hears the separate sounds and pushes them back together into a whole word. That's called oral blending, and it's one of the biggest reading skills a child builds before they ever look at a written word.

Bonus, she has started making up her own songs, which shows understanding of rhythm, oral segmenting, rhyme - all foundational phonics skills!

3. Teddy Voices

Whisper something silly to your child ("the dinosaur ate Daddy's smelly socks"  works every time in our house).

Now they have to tell their teddies. Except teddy only wants to hear it in a robot voice. Then a monster voice. Then a squeaky mouse. Then a cowboy. Then a giant. Etc etc!

Every retelling means they're listening hard, holding the sentence in their memory, and changing their voice by adding expression, or altering the pitch and volume. Those listening and memory skills and voice control skills all support early reading and comprehension.

4. Story Sound Effects

Works with pretty much any picture book you've already got on the shelf.

Open to a page with a busy picture and talk through what is happening in terms of sound effects.

Maybe the wind's whooshing. The dog's barking. Rain's falling. Leaves are crunching underfoot.

Let them use instruments if you've got them lying around, or just clap, stomp, tap the table, click their tongue, or change their voice to create the sound effects for the picture.

This game helps tuning in to sound, describing what they notice, and building the listening skills that back up reading comprehension later on too.

The best phonological awareness games don't look educational

Here's the bit I think most parents actually need to hear.

You don't need to recreate a Reception classroom in your front room. You don't need worksheets. You don't need flashcards. You definitely don't need to stress yourself out trying to fit in time to sit your pre-schooler down, then feel guilty when they don’t want to! 

Some of the strongest phonological awareness preschool activities are the ones your child doesn't even clock as learning. They happen while you're cooking tea. Walking to nursery. Putting toys away. Reading the same bedtime story for the four hundredth time.

Because children learn through play. And when something's actually fun, they ask to do it again, which is more than can be said for most worksheets I've ever met.