Three Little Letters

An important aspect of oral language development is phonological and phonemic awareness. Three Little Letters is a fun game that promotes the development of phonemic awareness. The game also encourages the phoneme–phonics connection and provides practise in blending sounds into a simple word. Comprehension and use of vocabulary is stressed through the creation of meaningful sentences containing the target word.

Materials:
– large letter cards
– pocket chart to display letters
– variety of CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words (e.g., ‘dog,’ ‘top,’ ‘fun,’ ‘sit,’
‘cat,’ ‘rip,’ ‘bat,’ ‘hop,’ ‘got,’ ‘kit,’ ‘lap,’ etc.)
Grouping: whole class

Playing the Game

  1. Choose a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) decodable word and the accompanying letters.
  2. Chant the following lyrics to the rhythm of “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed”:

        Three little letters sitting in a tree
        Singing, “Children, children, you can’t read me.”
        Along come the children, quiet as can be
        And snap a letter right out of that tree.


  3. Show the first letter.
  4. Say the letter name twice, the letter sound twice, and the letter name again (e.g., d…d…/d/…/d/…d).
  5. Then put the first letter in the pocket chart. Have students guess what the word could be.
  6. Chant the second verse:

        Two little letters sitting in a tree
        Singing, “Children, children, you can’t read me.”
        Along come the children, quiet as can be
        And snap a letter right out of that tree.


  7. Share the next letter and repeat the letter, sound, letter pattern (e.g., o…o…/o/…/o/…o).
  8. Place the second letter in the pocket chart next to the first. Invite students to use both the sounds to guess what the word could be.
  9. Chant the third verse:

        One little letter sitting in a tree
        Singing, “Children, children, you can’t read me.”
        Along come the children, quiet as can be
        And snap a letter right out of that tree.


  10. Show the final letter and repeat the letter, sound, letter combination (e.g., g…g…/g/…/g/…g).
  11. Place the final letter in the pocket chart to complete the word.
  12. Have students blend the sounds together to make the word, e.g.,  /d/ /o/ /g/ dog!
  13. Invite students to think of a sentence containing the word.
  14. Share sentences and repeat the game again using another CVC word.

Note: Later in the year, you may want to challenge your students by using digraphs (‘ch,’ ‘sh,’ ‘th’) as the initial phoneme. Show the digraph on the first card instead of a single consonant.

* Adapted from Building Oral Language Skills in PreK-K by Cindy Middendorf, Scholastic, Toronto, ON, 2009, pp. 28-29.