Kindergarten Phonics Games are Fun!
Phonics games in Kindergarten create interaction. Do you remember playing games with your parents as a child? Even you, as a child, knew mom or dad had lots to do, but it was SO GREAT when they actually devoted a few minutes to sit down and play a game with you? Truly, it made your day! Right?
Kindergarten phonics games is a partner game, which increases engagement! As a homeschool mom, you will notice the same thing. Yes, the direct instructional time of blending and segmenting words to read, as well as sounding out words to spell are vital components of teaching your child to read.
We can add some fun to keep the engagement high with Kindergarten Phonics Games like Phonics BUMP! It’s like a reward for the hard work of segmenting and blending skills to read simple words, but it’s sure not candy! Not that type of reward. This game allows our child to engage physically while rolling a dice or spinning a spinner and stacking cubes to secure his/her BUMP tower on the board.
Your child gets to reinforce phonics learning through play. They will know that after the cognitive, deep thinking work is done, they get a few moments to breathe and engage in a kid-friendly activity. If the lesson has been somewhat of a struggle that day, you can still end literacy learning with your child on a positive note. I believe this is so important.
Even with your best efforts as a home educator, you may find your child occasionally zoning out. Ramp up the learning with a phonics game! Reignite excitement about learning phonics skills and increase engagement through playing a phonics game, such as PHONICS BUMP! What makes a game, such as PHONICS BUMP unique? It has some natural competition built into phonics learning!
In BUMP, you and your child, or perhaps a sibling, will take turns rolling a 10-sided poly dice or spinner, find the circle with that number, then read the word inside the circle. If read correctly your child places a token on that circle.
If you, a sibling or a friend rolls the same number, you can ‘BUMP’ your partner’s token off. If a child rolls the same number twice before being bumped off, they stack a 2nd cube on top. This locks the word and his or her tokens can no longer be bumped off. Play until all circles have stacks or until one player has 5 stacks. This allows you as a parent to decide how long the game will go.
Kindergarten Phonics Games Reinforce Reading Skills
Research backs up play as a way to reinforce academic skills. According to the article by Kristen Hediecker at Minnesota State University entitled, ‘Effects of Play-Based Learning on Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Skills’, she concludes that ‘while it is important to help students learn the early literacy skills that are embedded in the academic standards, it should be done so in a developmentally appropriate way, such as play-based learning.
Kindergarten Phonics Games are Screen-Free!
PHONICS BUMP is a screen-free activity. Yes, you can feel good about this screen free, fun and engaging phonics skills reinforcement game. No guilt here. Parent friend, do prioritize 5-10 minutes to play PHONICS BUMP with your child.
What do I need to play PHONICS BUMP? Get a PHONICS BUMP game that matches the current phonics skill you are teaching your learner. Print the game board. Kids love poly dice. I highly recommend purchasing a 10-sided poly dice. You can also print out the 10-sided spinner that comes with the printable PHONICS BUMP printable. For cubes, you can use Lego pieces (each partner uses one colour) or any other stackable cubes you have on hand.
