SoundlyListening games come before letters. Phonemic awareness programmes start with environmental sound and only later move to the sounds inside words.1
Six that work
Sound Magic
Children sit still and name what they can hear, then close their eyes and guess which classmate is walking. Extends to tapping water glasses filled to different levels, and identifying household sounds from a recording.2
Sound Bingo
Pictures of noisemakers go on bingo cards. A child draws a picture from a bag and makes that sound; the others match it.3
Sound Safari
Hide bells, shakers and a drum around the room, play each in turn, and the children locate the source.
Guess Who
One child imitates an animal; the others name it. Simple, and it connects a sound to a word, which is the whole point.
Stop and Go
Move on green, freeze on red. Practising response to a signal, which is a listening skill before it is a behaviour one.
Simon Says
Children have to separate what was actually said from what they expected to hear.
Tap any of them. These are the real recordings, playing here in the browser — the thing every game above quietly assumes you already have.
The thing these all assume
Read those again and notice what keeps appearing. Sound Magic asks for a tape of sounds around the house. Sound Bingo asks the teacher to imitate the noises. Guess Who asks the children to.
Every one of them needs real recorded sounds, and essentially nobody supplies them. So the games get run with whatever the adult can do with their own voice — which works for a cow and falls apart at a woodpecker, a kettle or a harp.
Where to get the sounds
Soundly is 361 real recordings across six worlds — farm animals, wild animals, instruments, vehicles, activities and things around the house — each with a real photograph, and the word spoken in 19 languages.
The twelve farm animals are free, and you can play them in the browser right now, no install, for Sound Bingo tomorrow morning. The modular design is the same one kindergartens use: pictures and sounds alone for the youngest, then the spoken name, then the written word, then a second language — each turned on when the child is ready.
Hear all 361 of them
Soundly is 360 real photographs and 361 real recordings across six worlds, in 19 languages, read by a human voice actor. The twelve farm animals are free.
References
- Phonemic awareness: listening activities, Sightwords.com — the progression from environmental sound to spoken language.
- Sound Magic, Gryphon House.
- Sound Bingo, Missouri 4-H: Listening for Sounds (PDF). Further activities: 14 listening games for early years.