How to Use
This fun little placemat can be used in soooooo many ways to promote phonological awareness. All you need is a toy car (or really any toy to be honest!) I suggest working on syllables before individual sounds in words.
Sound Street
On Sound Street you’ll see different color dots. Your little can use the dots to segment syllables or sounds in a word! If your child is identifying syllables in a word, they can start at either end and move their car to each dot to separate the syllables.
For example, if your little is given the word “potato,” they would drive to three dots because there are three syllables (po-ta-to). Encourage your little to say the sounds aloud then go back and count the number of dots.
If your child is ready to separate individual sounds in words, they can use the same dots to represent sounds (not letters, sounds). If the word is “shake,” your child will drive to three dots because there are three sounds: /sh/ /ā/ /k/.
This is not the time to point out that “sh” is a digraph or that there’s a silent e on the end. Focus on the sounds.
*Pro Tip: Sometimes I have to ask myself how I actually pronounce a word in order to figure out the number of syllables. Also, different dialects will pronounce things differently, so there may be discrepancies when counting syllables. For example for the word “mirror,” I actually pronounce as “meer,” so it sounds like it’s one syllable, but it’s actually two because each syllable has to have a vowel sound. The placements of the vowels in the word indicate it’s two syllables (mir-ror).
Parking
Your child can also use the parking spaces to represent sounds. This would be a great time to bring in other cars or toys too to represent multiple sounds or syllables.
Alphabet Arch
Although this is a phonological awareness activity, I wanted to include the alphabet arch if a child is ready to connect letters to sounds. If using this as a placemat at a meal and your child points out a letter, this is the PERFECT time to assign the sounds to letters. “Oh that’s the letter F. It makes the /f/ sound. Like fffffish or fffffriend. Can you say /f/? What other things start with the /f/ sound?”
I love having literacy materials just there in their normal, everyday life. This helps make learning not seem like a chore or a task, but it’s just a part of the normal discourse of life.
You can download it here for FREE!! It’s also on TeachersPayTeachers.com for free there if you prefer to keep all your resources stored there.
I suggest printing on cardstock and laminating.
Also, check out the Instagram Reel I made for this resource. It took four hours because I feel like I’m 95 learning new technology. BUT it was a lot of fun and I’m happy with how it turned out.
Let me know what you think! What worked for you? What didn’t work? How did you use it differently?