There are plenty of games and activities you can play with your child to help develop phonemic awareness long before they are introduced to the written form of letters and sounds. As phonemic awareness is purely auditory, the games to help develop it can be played by very young children. These ideas are to help children learn to tune into, listen to, differentiate and remember different sounds all around them, not just sounds in words. More to come in the next few days

•    Go for a listening walk: tell you child that it’s a special walk and they have to notice all the sounds they can hear (cars, birds, aeroplanes, talking etc.). Get them to talk about the sounds as they hear them and also to try to imitate them. When you get back, ask them to remember what sounds they heard.

•    Take a drumstick (wooden, not chicken) into the garden and get them to listen to the different sounds it makes by tapping, stroking or dragging it against different things (wooden post, drainpipe, metal post, wire fence, plant pots…). Ask which their favourite sound is and get them to play a tune using different sounds.