Count the phonemes

I made this for my Letters and Sounds group. Say a word and children have to break it down into the phonemes. I copied it, laminated it and children write on it with a dry wipe pen.

You could just use it as a worksheet, at least this way you have a record of how children are progressing.

How do you count phonemes?

A phoneme is the smallest sound you can hear in a word. So for example the word 'cat' has 3 phonemes /c/ /a/ /t/. The word 'ship' has 3 phonemes /sh/ /i/ /p/. The word 'sheep' has 3 phonemes /sh/ /ee/ /p/. The word 'shape' has 3 phonemes /sh//a_e/ /p/. It takes practise to get it right but soon becomes automatic.