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Phonics Activities for Kids in Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd Grade

Phonics activities have always been my favorite way to teach kids how letters and sounds connect. Over the years, I’ve seen how a few fun games, stories, and worksheets can completely transform reading time. In this guide, I’ll share tried-and-true activities for kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders that make phonics learning easy, playful, and effective.

Key points

• Phonics activities help children connect letters with sounds, blend them into words, and build strong reading and spelling foundations.
• Brighterly’s expert-designed printable worksheets strengthen phonics rules, visual memory, decoding, and spelling accuracy.
• Phonics fun activities like rhyming stories, word family games, and syllable clapping improve vocabulary, comprehension, and creativity.
• Each activity is age-appropriate, gradually building from letter identification to fluent reading and expression.

Ways to teach phonics

• Introducing letter-sound relationships through songs, stories, and visual aids;
• Blending and segmenting activities so children can form and read simple words;
• Using hands-on games, phonics activity worksheets, and storytelling to make practice fun and engaging – be it one-on-one or in a small group.

8 phonics activities for kids

• Worksheets for practice 
• Recognizing letters everywhere 
• Connecting letters with sounds 
• Sound blending games 
• Spelling and reading practice 
• Playing with syllables 
• Mastering tricky sight words 
• Phonics storytime and rhyming fun 

Phonics activity for kids #1: Worksheets for practice

Best for: Kindergarten to 2nd grade

Professional reading tutors at Brighterly math and reading platform created targeted printable tasks that reinforce phonics rules. You can pair these printable tasks with magnetic letters for hands-on phonics fun. These exercises build consistency and visual memory. They also enhance letter-sound recognition, decoding, and spelling. 

Brighterly’s phonics worksheets are free, expertly designed, perfect for at-home practice, and widely used by students across the US. You can use them online, print and laminate the pages, or use dry-erase boards so your child can reuse them for daily practice.

Teaching phonics activities may be a win-win way to spend time together! You’re having fun and, at the same time, improving a wide range of reading and spelling skills, including encoding and other core phonics essentials.

Phonics activity #2: Recognizing letters everywhere

Best for: Preschool and kindergarten

It’s spotting letters on signs, labels, or books that strengthens print awareness and alphabet familiarity. This type of phonics activities for kindergarten is used early in phonics learning, during daily routines. It ultimately helps develop visual discrimination and letter identification. It also helps little ones connect what they see in the world with the letters they’re learning.

Examples of phonics activities on recognizing letter 

1. Letter search. Print some worksheets (or grab a few old magazines) with a bunch of different letters laid out in a grid, and let your kid look for and circle one letter. You can also have them circle letters in various colors (A in red, D in green, etc.).
2. Letter line up. Take a set of letters (first uppercase, and then lowercase), and challenge your child to sort them by letters with:

• • only straight lines (e.g., W or X),
  • only curvy lines (like C or S), 
  • a mix of straight and curvy (D or B, etc.).

Phonics activity for kindergarten #3: Connecting letters with sounds

Best for: Kindergarten

Children pair written letters with spoken sounds. That way, phonemic awareness and decoding ability are actually formed. Use letter-sound correspondence before blending sounds or reading simple words to build your child’s sound recognition and phoneme-grapheme connections.

Examples of phonics activities on connecting letters with sounds

1. Alphabet sound sorting. Grab a few containers or baskets marked with letters (e.g., A, B, and C). Collect small pictures or toys beginning with those sounds – like, an apple, a ball, a car. Ask your kid to say the item’s name out loud, listen for the sound it starts with, and put it in the correct container.
2. Sound hunt around the house. Choose a sound of the day – let’s say it’d be /s/. Walk around your house and search for items beginning with that sound: it might be sock, spoon, soap. Pronounce the words together, stretching out the starting sound. (Hello to all parents of wigglers here!)  

Activity for phonics #4: Sound blending games

Best for: Kindergarten and 1st grade

These activities combine sounds to form words. They teach how sounds come together to make meaning and, in doing so, develop blending, segmenting, and early reading fluency.

Phonics activity ideas on sound blending games

1. Robot talk. Act like robots speaking in sounds – ‘C-A-T.’ Challenge your kid to guess the word. And then, switch roles! Children adore the silly voice, and it helps them brush up on blending sounds into full words.
2. Elkonin boxes. Sketch three or four boxes on a sheet of paper. Pronounce a word like ‘ship’ or ‘dog.’ Let your kid put a counter or token in every box as they say every sound. 

Phonics activity for kids #5: Spelling & reading practice

Best for: 1st and 2nd grade

It means writing or reading words following phonics instruction aimed at reinforcing sound patterns and sight recognition. Therefore, once kids can blend simple words, they move on to spelling accuracy, decoding, and comprehension.

Fun phonics activities on spelling & reading practice

1. Blended maze 
   • Make a worksheet with a grid of 5×8 blends. In the top left corner, write a word beginning with a consonant blend. 
   • Then make a ‘snaking path’ of words that start with consonant blends that wind their way down to the bottom right corner. 
   • Fill in the remaining spaces with words that do not start with a consonant blend. 
   • Mark the upper left corner ‘Start’ and the lower right corner ‘Finish.’ 
   • Let your child find their way through the maze by coloring in all the cells starting with consonant blends.
2. Find the missing letter. This activity features cards with illustrations and a label next to each. However, each label should be missing one (or more!) letters, featuring a blank space where the missing letter should be. Let’s say, a picture of a stop sign might have the label ST _P (or F_ O G (frog), F_AG (flag), etc.). Ask your child to fill in the missing letters.

Hands on phonics activities #6: Playing with syllables

Best for: 1st grade

These phonics activities for grade 1 involve clapping, sorting, and splitting words into syllables. Once your child masters short words, doing these activities will help make longer words easier for them to read and say. It’s about word segmentation, rhythm, and pronunciation.

Activities to teach phonics with syllables

1. Syllable split. Create a worksheet with one-, two-, and three-syllable words, write them down in a large font. Have your kid draw a slash through the words, thus separating out the syllables (e.g., winter should be divided like win/ter).
2. Syllable boxes. When studying closed syllables, give your child a worksheet containing a list of words with a closed syllable – e.g., lemon, topic, model, and visit. Ask them to draw a box around the closed syllable.

Fun phonics activities #7: Mastering tricky sight words

Best for: 1st and 2nd grade

Fun phonics activities for 2nd grade, in particular, include learning irregular words that don’t follow phonics rules. It’s meant to build fluency and reading confidence. It also helps get better at word recognition, visual memory, and fluency.

Example of activity for phonics with sight words

1. Pronoun pointing. Some pronouns – like I, they, she, you, we, he – will be encountered by children long before their ability to decode them. Put up a text with multiple pronouns and read it aloud. Then have your kid make the corresponding gesture upon seeing/hearing one of the pronouns:

• • I – point their thumb at their chest
  • You – point their index finger away from their body
  • She – point the thumb to the left
  • He – point the thumb to the right
  • We – point both thumbs at their chest
  • They – one thumb pointing left and the other pointing right. 

Phonics activity ideas #8: Phonics storytime and rhyming fun

Best for: Kindergarten to 2nd grade

Before you move on to phonics activity for grade 3 – 4, it’s highly recommended to read stories, poems, or rhymes with a phonics focus. It’ll help your child apply phonics in real reading situations and boost vocabulary, comprehension, and creative thinking.

Teaching phonics activities with storytime and rhyming

1. Word family silly stories 

• • Come up with a fill-in-the-blank story where each blank is meant to be filled with a word from a particular word family. 
  • Let your child suggest words to fill in the blanks and spell them aloud. 

For example: Adam wants to (verb with _ake) a (noun with _ame).

This could come out as Adam wants to make a game.

Or, it could also end up, Adam wants to shake a frame or even Adam wants to bake a flame. 

This example of phonics activity can be really fun – their imagination may surprise you!!

     2. Rhyming poetry

• • Write down a short poem, with the last word of each line missing, like here:

Today I want to ____

But I found a ____

That made me ____

• • Choose a word family, and encourage your child to finish the poem. For example, in the case of the _ake word family:

Today I want to bake

But I found a snake

That made me shake! 

Phonics at home activities: Age recommendations 

	Kindergarten	1st grade	2nd grade	Why
Worksheets for practice	👍Build letter & sound recognition	👍Practice new phonics skills	👍Boost reading fluency & spelling	Practice builds automaticity
Recognizing letters everywhere	👍Learn the alphabet IRL	👎Quick review	👎Occasional review	Makes learning letters fun & hands-on
Connecting letters with sounds	👍Core early skill	👍Strengthen decoding	👎Review only	Key step toward reading readiness
Sound blending games	👍Blend simple words	👍Build reading fluency	👎Extra practice	Teaching how sounds form words
Spelling and reading practice	👎Early exposure	👍Core skill	👍Grow vocabulary	Connects reading and spelling
Playing with syllables	👎Simple clapping game	👍Learn word chunks	👍Decode long words	Helps with longer words
Mastering tricky sight words	👎Start with basics	👍Build a word bank	👍Fluency practice	Builds confidence with everyday words
Phonics storytime & rhyming fun	👍Enjoy rhymes & rhythm	👍Create stories	👍Read with expression	Makes phonics fun & meaningful

Other activities to teach phonics (by format)

If you’re not sure where to start, you may use the following summary table. Choose the format your child prefers or the skill they need to improve, and choose an activity from the examples. Or if you’d like to get more  prepared,  read  Brighterly’s  guide  on How to Teach Phonics at Home.  

	Examples of phonics activities	Benefits/skills developed
Hands-on/craft-based forma	Glitter letters, Letter labels, Blend & build with blocks, Phonics flower, Fix the word!	– Improves fine motor skills – Strengthens letter-sound recognition through tactile learning – Strengthens letter formation and visual memory
Movement & physical games	Go fish!, Letter says, Silent match, Phonics hopscotch, Reading hopscotch, Human spelling bee, Human syllable bee	– Supports kinesthetic learning – Improves memory  – Supports active engagement and focus – Great for active learners
Sorting & matching activities	Mystery bag of sounds, Sing the sound song, Letter swap, CVC plus silent e, Vowel up, thumb up!, Word unscramble, Contraction matching	– Builds pattern recognition and understanding of letter-sound groups – Strengthens understanding of letter-sound relationships and word structure
Word-building & writing games	Floss your consonants, Draw the sentence, Word family ladder, Eyes on oo!	– Builds spelling fluency – Helps children see word families and phonetic patterns – Builds creative sentence-making skills
Reading & listening games	Spelling challenge, Silent Simon, ‘The’ hunt, Fill in the blank, Mystery sentences, Rhyming poetry	– Improves listening comprehension, vocabulary, and pronunciation – Builds sight word recognition and reading comprehension in context

Activities for phonics conclusion: Turn practice into play

TBH, phonics success starts with consistency and joy. Times when phonics activities for kids were boring and dull have long gone. Book free reading lesson at Brighterly, and try out interactive lessons, games, and hands-on activities your child will love.