What is Phonemic Awareness?

 I've heard it explained as reading instruction you can do "in the dark" or "with your eyes closed".  It is really teaching students awareness of the sounds that are present in the language you are teaching them to read.  Some examples of this would be:

What sound do you hear at the beginning of the word moon? /mmmm/

What are the sounds in the word sat?  /s/ /a/ /t/

Students must develop this awareness before they can make connections to letters and letter sounds and learn to read.  Unfortunately in our hurry to teach students to read, this step is often skipped over and early reading programs skip right to letters, letter names, and expose children to print.  While this isn't necessarily harmful, it is a bit like putting the cart before the horse. While students can be exposed to letters and learn to write them, this is often taught to the exclusion of sound awareness within the language.  Instead, the sounds are taken out of their context and young children are simply taught that M says /m/ and are expected to make that connection to language on their own without significant and explicit instruction. On this blog, I would like to compile some fun ways to build phonemic awareness with your young preschooler at home, before they start their formal reading instruction.