5 Ways Phonics Sound Mats Support Phonics Learning and How to Use Them

What is a Phonics Sound Mat?

A phonics sound mats are visual aid often used in early education settings to support children’s understanding of phonics. Sound mats can be equally useful to use at home.

What is Phonics?

Phonics is the relationship between sounds and their corresponding letters or letter combinations. To find out more about phonics head to the phonics homepage here.

Phonemes and Graphemes

Typically, a sound mat displays the graphemes (letters and letter combinations) that make up a sound (phoneme). Each grapheme has an associated image to match, Usually it is the sound that the word begins with but if this isn’t possible the sound will be somewhere in the word.

Phoneme – A sound – not a letter. There are approximately 44 sounds in the English language (I say approximately as accents can make this differ). When you see something written as a sound it will have a forward slash at the beginning and end of the sound. For example /a/.

Grapheme – How you write the sound (phoneme) using a letter or number of letters. For example – the five letter word night consists of three sounds (phonemes): /n/ /ie/ /t/ and is written using three graphemes: ‘n’ – ‘igh’ – ‘t’.

Sound Mats Support Independence

Phonics sound mats provide children with a reference to help them decode words and improve their reading and writing skills. It helps to have a consistent phonics sound mat for children to use so they become familiar with the learning resource to support their learning.

This post will explain why phonics sound mats are useful, activities you can use sound mats for and downloads to free phonics sound mats for different phonics phases. For further support you may like to join the new Facebook group here.

5 Ways Phonics Sound Maps Help Support Learning

  1. Visual Support: They provide a quick visual reference for children, helping them recall sounds associated with each grapheme (letter/s) or phoneme. The images help to support quicker recall of the graphemes/ phonemes and commit them to memory.
  2. Supports Phonemic Awareness: Phonics sound mats help children develop phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate sounds, which is crucial for reading and writing. The visual nature of sound mats and associated object/ image helps to build this awareness through familiarity and repitition.
  3. Encourages Independence: Children can use the sound mats independently during writing or reading tasks, fostering self-reliance and confidence in their abilities. Being able to solve problems on your own can bring a real sense of achievement.
  1. Facilitates Learning: They can support differentiated learning, as children can use them at their own pace. One child may rely on them to help them decode every letter in a word whereas another may just need a quick glance to help give them confirmation and confidence in what they already know.
  2. Promotes Word Recognition: By associating sounds with pictures or words, sound mats help reinforce the concept of decoding and word recognition.

Activities to use a Phonics Sound Mat for

  1. Sound Matching: Say a sound and get children to locate it on the sound mat.
  2. Object Spot: Children can match letters on the sound mat to objects or pictures around the home/ classroom, reinforcing letter-sound relationships. Point to an object in the setting and get children to find the sound that that object starts with on their mat.

V = Vowel, C = Consonant. So, a VC word would be is or at, A CVC word would be cat or big.

CVC Learning Resource

Montessori Inspired CVC activity set perfect for developing early reading, letter formation and writing skills.

  1. Sound Speller: Say the sounds of a simple CVC word in turn. Get children to locate the sounds on the mat and work out what they word is. They could say it, write it or use magnetic letters.
  2. Word Building: Use the sound mat to create words. Children can choose sounds from the mat to form simple words with magnetic letters or letter tiles.

More Activity Ideas for Sound Mats

  1. Sound Hunts: Give children a specific sound, locate it on the sound mat and have them find and collect objects or pictures that start with that sound.
  2. Writing Prompts: Children can choose a picture from the sound mat and write a sentence or story related to that image, practising both writing and sound recognition. Alternatively children could record a verbal sentence or story on a recording device.
  3. Reading Practice: Encourage children to read words that contain the sounds on the mat, helping them practise decoding skills.
  4. Warming Up the Words: Before reading a book with children learning to read, warm up first. Say a sound you know will be coming up frequently in the book and get them to identify the sound on the sound mat. Repeat for other sounds before reading the book.

For more ideas on ways to read books with early readers check out this post.

Using phonics sound mats in these activities can create a fun and engaging learning environment, making the process of learning to read and write more enjoyable for young children.

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Free Phonics Sound Mat Downloads

Below you will find phonics sound mats for:

  • Phonics Phase 2 Sound Mat
  • Phonics Phase 3 Sound Mat
  • Phonics Phase 5 Sound Mat

These are visual sound mats that use real images (Montessori style) to depict the different sounds of each phase.

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