Early readers that love the outdoors, Parents that garden, + School Garden Educators will enjoy this free literacy garden activity and printable PDF that promotes phonemic awareness.
This printable is training for caregivers to recognize that any loving and safe environment for a child can be leveraged for learning and play. Particularly when we take children outside where there are literally less physical and societal boundaries and pressures to suppress a child’s inner curiosity and desire to play.
This approach to learning outside can be used to teach early readers or pre-readers about phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is when young children are aware that words are made up of sounds. Not one giant sound aka word, but small sounds that build into words. For example, the word “math” has 3 sounds m-a-th. The focus is on sounds initially, not letters.
The Garden Sounds Scavenger Hunt pdf contains 3 worksheets to guide in establishing this mindset in an early reader via garden play. Each page provides early readers an opportunity to explore sounds in the garden in different ways (phonemic awareness).
- The 1st page provides pictures of typical garden vegetables and beginning sounds for the early reader to find in the garden, then color.
- The 2nd page asks the early reader to find beginning sounds outside in nature, then write the letter and draw a picture of the word.
- The 3rd page focuses on finding vowel sounds in nature words, then the early readers draws the word they see and labels the drawing.
This activity can be repeated many times. Try exploring new outside spaces to keep things interesting. For more advanced readers you can adapt this activity by focusing on end sound, consonant blends, or vowel sounds. Writing and actual use of written letters is not required.
Consider playing similar sound scavenger games in different environments to build phonemic awareness as you enjoy this summer:
- zoo sound scavenger hunt
- I Spy sound games while on road trips, say “I spy something that starts with the sound /a/“
- beach sound scavenger hunt
- nature hike sound hunt
Happy reading fams!
💪🏽Elisabeth
*Click here to download the free garden sounds pdf
PS. Need more support? Try the *5 star* reviewed Teach Your Child to Read: A Mommy + Me Coloring Book to start your child’s early reading journey from A to Z.