Phonemic awareness begins at an early age. This is the understanding that words are made up of sounds which can be assembled in different ways to make different words. Early childhood games such as the rhyming game (i.e. cat, bat, sat,mat) and teaching baby games such as the first sounds of "ma" and then adding "mama" to get mom reinforce these concepts. Common exercises to develop phonemic awareness include games with rhymed words, games based on recognizing initial consonance. Children without phonemic awareness and understanding might not have learned to hear the difference between three or free, lice or rice, meat or neat. Phonological is another important pre-reading skill which also must be learned and practiced.

We suggest Time4Learning for your phonemic awareness lesson plans. Time4Learning is an educational system for children with lessons, activities, printable worksheets, learning games, and assessments. Time4Learning's educational content is provided primarily by CompassLearning® Odyssey. These materials are known to many under the name: ChildU.

Families can use Time4Learning core phonemic awareness lesson plan curriculum or for enrichment. Parents can pick and choose what lessons they wish to use or they can use them in sequence.

Todays-learner.com has this to say about phonemic awareness. "Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that spoken words are made up of sounds, or phonemes".

"Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of sounds. Phonics is the link between specific sounds and their written form. Before trying to teach phonics, a student needs an understanding that the words that they hear are constructed of sounds--- phonemic awareness".