In Kindergarten we teach phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the
ability to manipulate sounds orally. This is the precurser to phonics where
students decode and spell words. Phonemic awareness is a major component in
children's future reading success. The activities are almost always done
orally. The components of one of the programs we use include increasing
language awareness, rhyming, identifying the beginning sound, blending sounds
together, identifying the ending and middle sound, segmenting sounds,
substituting sounds to make new words, adding sounds to make new words, and
deleting sounds.