Phonics Reaction Time Challenge

This is such a fun and simple way to help improve your child’s phonics knowledge at home. It is important when your child is learning phonics that they can recognise the different sounds quickly. As the faster they can recall them, the easier it will be for them to blend them back together and therefore read words. This activity is an amazingly fun way of getting your little one to practice their phonic sounds at speed! Also there is no reason why other family members can’t have a go as well.

Set Up

You need a wall, a pen and post-it notes. Write the sounds on the post-it notes, I used these sticky notes. stick them on the wall and that’s it! Easy peasy! Choose sounds that your child is confident with but add ones that they need more practice on.

So the game is simple; you call out the sounds and your child needs to find and slap the sound as quickly as possible. I would recommend that you ask your little one to say the sound as they slap it. That way they are also practicing saying the sounds and not just recognising them. I used a timer on my phone to see how many sounds M could ‘slap’ in a given time. That way she could see if she could better her score each time. I initially tried a 10 second timer but quickly changed it to 20 seconds as it took her a while to work out where all the sounds were. Obviously F was keen to get involved too; so she had a go at hitting sounds and colours.

To start off with M struggled. I think she got 1 sound in 10 seconds the first time. I’m not sure if her phonics knowledge was rusty or it was her reactions and eye sight that was letting her down. But either way she improved. By the end she was really confident and fast! This is definitely a phonics activity that we will do again at home when we have 5 minutes to spare.