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Home » All categories » Activities for Phonemic Awareness: Carrot Boxes

Activities for Phonemic Awareness: Carrot Boxes

March 16, 2015 • 7 Comments

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I’m often asked, “How do I teach my children to read?”  My first response is always to read, read, and read some more to them.  My second response is to play lots and lots of games to develop their phonological and phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to break a word down into its individual speech sounds (example: the word cat is made up of three separate phonemes- /c/ /a/ and /t/).

Teaching kids about phonemic awareness is typically done through oral language activities that are playful and fun.

Today we have a spring themed activity that uses elkonin boxes or sound boxes.

Build phonemic awareness skills with this spring  themed activity.

Carrot Boxes Phonemic Awareness Activity

During this activity children will practice segmenting or separating the phonemes (sounds) they hear in a word.  This is all done orally with no visual representation of the letters.  If you use letters then the activity turns into a phonics activity which is ok, but we are working on developing phonemic awareness skills here!

Remember we learn to listen and speak before we learn to read and write.

Preparing the Activity

1. You will need a carrot patch sound box for each child.

Phonemic awareness activity that includes a free printable

Download the FREE Carrot Patch Sound Box Printable HERE!

You could also draw 3 boxes on a blank sheet of paper and that would work just fine.

2. Pick up a small bag of carrot chocolates.  During Easter, you will find them at almost any store that carries candy.  We got ours at Target and also saw them at Dollar Tree.  You will need three carrots for this activity.

Ready to Play

Place each carrot under a box in the dirt.

Say a word with three sounds (phonemes).  Here are some ideas to get you started.

bug, cat, top, net, man, dig, bed, him, cot, rug, wish, dash, chop, thin

Have your child stretch the word out into phonemes.  I like to say, “Stretch it out like a rubber band.”  As the child says the first sound, they push a carrot into the first box to make it sprout.  Continue for all three sounds.

Playing  a spring themed activity to build phonemic awareness skills.

If the word is ten, the child would say /t/ and push the first carrot into the box.  Then, /e/ and push the second carrot up into the box. Finally, /n/ and push the last carrot into the last box.

Pull the carrots back down into the dirt and repeat with a new word.

Notice that just because a word has four letters doesn’t mean it has four phonemes.  Wish is /w/,/i/, /sh/.

It is important that we model the correct sound for each phoneme.  Be careful not to add additional sounds.  For example the sound we use to represent the letter d is /d/ not /duh/.  Here is a video where I model the correct way to say each sound.

When you are finished playing this phonemic awareness activity, you can enjoy a yummy chocolate treat.

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7 Comments Filed Under: All categories Tagged With: easter

About Jodie Rodriguez

Jodie Rodriguez is a mom of two young boys and an early childhood/elementary educator with over 20 years of experience. Jodie's passion is helping parents, teachers, librarians and anyone else interested in nurturing and reaching ALL of our youngest growing readers.

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  1. Helena says

    March 23, 2015 at 5:54 pm

    And you only need three carrots, you say? 🙂 love activities that equal extra chocolate for me!

    Reply
    • Jodie Rodriguez says

      March 24, 2015 at 10:19 pm

      Yes Helena! Plenty of leftovers for the adults!

      Reply
  2. Samantha @ Stir the Wonder says

    March 22, 2015 at 3:42 pm

    Great idea! We love playing learning games! Thanks for linking up at the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop! We hope you join us again next week!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Educational Easter Activities to Promote Math and Literacy says:
    February 22, 2019 at 7:51 pm

    […] Activities for Phonemic Awareness: Carrot Boxes from Growing Book by Book […]

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  2. 40 Free Easter Printables for Preschool and Kindergarten says:
    February 19, 2019 at 10:36 am

    […] your kids are done playing this phonemic awareness “carrot boxes” activity, they’ll have a yummy treat to enjoy. Growing Book by […]

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  3. 10 Car Games to Get Your Child Ready to Read! - The Measured Mom says:
    April 1, 2015 at 12:03 am

    […] Carrot sound boxes (free printable) […]

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    March 24, 2015 at 7:55 pm

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