Teaching Manipulation and Deletion of Phonemes when Learning to Read

Once your little one begins to grow confident with segmenting and blending syllables and sounds/words, they are ready to begin to play with language in a new way. These skills drastically help to improve their later reading and spelling skills. This is because these skills open up new ways of thinking about words. Children start to look for patterns in words, how different sounds change a word, and how words are similar to each other. Playing with sounds where your child uses manipulation and deletion prepare them to build these skills.

Children who are ready to begin to play with the sounds of language at the manipulation and deletion level should have well developed phonemic awareness skills. To learn more about teaching the earlier phonemic awareness skills, please read our posts on teaching rhyming, blending and segmenting. Most children who are experimenting with manipulating sounds are ready to begin formal instruction in phonics and sight words.

Manipulation First

Start with manipulation of sounds in words. This works well to strengthen a child’s rhyme skills as well as help them to begin to understand that many words are similar with only a small difference. Even though deletion is an easier skill, we like to start with manipulation. This is simply because child can always make a word with manipulation, however, when working on deletion the answers are often syllables and not complete words. This can be a little tricky for our young readers.

However, if your child has developed both their blending and segmenting skills, but finds manipulation a little too much, we suggest you jump to deletion. Then you can return to manipulation once your child improves their ability to delete a sound from a word. Just be really careful when you choose words for deletion activities to try to provide answers that are also words.

What is Manipulation and How to Teach Sound Manipulation

When working on manipulation, your child will focus on switching one sound in the word for another sound. For example, say, “Change the /m/ in map to /c/.” Your little one should be able to say “cap.” If your child struggles with this, go back to segmenting words into their initial sound and ending – /m/ /ap/.

If this skills continues to be troublesome for your reader, skip down to deletion. You can try breaking manipulation into it’s two main parts for your child. Ask them to first delete the sound that will change. Then add the new sound. For example, say, “Delete the /m/ in map.” With some work on segmenting initial sounds and deletion, your child should be able to provide /ap/ as the correct answer. Then say, “Add a /c/ to the beginning of /ap/.” Using both blending onset and rime as well as addition, your child should then provide the word cap. As you can see, quite a bit goes into manipulation of sounds.

Adding a Challenge for Manipulating Sounds in Words

As your child grows more confident, add in blends. At first have them change the entire blend, then move on to changing just the first sound. For example, “Change /br/ in brown to /cl/.” Your child should give the word clown if they are successful. Then try, “Change /b/ in black to /s/.” In this example, your child’s response will be slack for correct manipulation of sounds. For a real challenge, have them try to change the second sound of a blend. As a challenge, try “Change /l/ in blue to /r/.” Now your child should respond with brew. See how this is much trickier but so beneficial for children?

Activities to Develop Sound Manipulation

Activities for manipulation can be a little tricky because you will want to try to change one word into another word in the beginning. Once your child is more experienced, you can explore the world of nonsense words. This opens up manipulation activities so much. For right now, I’m going to focus on activities that use real words.

Sound Boxes

Sound boxes can really support your child’s manipulation of sounds and then deletion of sounds. If your child struggles with figuring out the sound to change, try using two color chips. This allows your child to flip over the chip for the sound that changes. If you don’t have two color chips, that’s okay too. You can ask your child to switch the chip for a small object or different color chip. This helps your child to focus on the sound that changes.

ABC Rhymes

We love to add rhyming into manipulation. Pull out your old rhyming game where you ask your child to think of as many different rhymes for a word. Now make one little change. Instead of making any rhyme, ask your child to make a rhyme that begins with a specific sound. This is where the alphabet rhyming game comes in. It can be a lot of fun to try to create a rhyming word that begins with each letter of the alphabet (well, maybe minus the vowels). We love to go in alphabetical order and if your little wants more, add in blends and digraphs at the end.

Songs & Fingerplays

The Apples and Bananas song is so fun for manipulation of sounds. This song plays specifically with vowels sounds by changing the A in apple and banana to each of the other vowels. We love to sing this song any time we have an extra moment and love the new silly words that we say.

Another fun song to play with sound manipulation is Old MacDonald. We love to play with the different sounds the animals make. For instance, instead of moo for the cow, we might change the /oo/ sound to an /aw/ and have our cow saw maw. Instead of changing the vowel sound, you could also change the beginning consonant or ending consonant sounds. Your ducks could say quaff or your sheep might say blaa. So many fun quick changes to play with sound manipulation.

You can also play with various fingerplays too. Try changing a sound for the action word in “Wheels on the Bus” or the rhyming word in “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear.” You could have some fun with “The Ants go Marching” too. We love changing the action that the little one does by manipulating one of the sounds too.

Manipulation Ladders or Dominos

Picture manipulation ladders are a great tool for playing with sounds. Start with one word, change one sound to create a new word. Using the new word, change one sound. You can change the same sound or pick one of the other sounds to change. Continue this pattern until your create about 10 words. Then look for a picture for each of the words. We lay out the ten pictures and let our children try to build the manipulation ladder by only changing one sound in each rung of the ladder.

When you first start using this strategy, you may want to set some limits. We begin with few cards. You may only start with 3 – 5 pictures or objects. This allows your child to learn the process in a simple environment. Another piece that you might want to limit is which sounds you change. In the beginning, you might focus just on changing the first sound and creating words which rhyme. As your child’s skill grows you can change additional sounds and see where the game takes you.

For a challenge, instead of creating a ladder, play this more as dominos. Your child can create multiple paths from each card going in any directions. You child can then continue to add cards from any other card on the board. This allows you to combine all your lists to create even more fun.

Sound Manipulation I Spy

A little change in our old favorite I Spy game can add some wonderful practice on playing with sound manipulation. When we play I Spy to try to target sound manipulation, we give a word that is similar but different by one sound. For example, I might say, “I spy something black and white and sounds like clom.” I am hoping my little one can figure out that I was referring to the clock. In the beginning, we pick the object and have our reader guess. However, as they become more proficient with sound manipulation, we turn over the spying to our child.

Then Deletion

Along with manipulation, you can work on deletion. Some children find this easier than manipulating sounds, but this is a more complex idea for children to grasp as sounds leave the word. Subtracting sounds is always more difficult than adding a sound. In the beginning, be careful with the words you pick and the sounds you ask your child to delete. Try to ensure that their answer is a real world that they have heard before.

Compound Words and Syllables

With deletion, we like to begin with compound words and asking our child to delete one of the two words. Be sure to practice deleting both the first word and the second word. For example, “Say outside without side” or “Say birdhouse without bird.” Practicing deleting both the first and second word prepares your child for deleting individual sounds.

Beginning Sounds

Once your child is pretty good with compound word deletion, more on to deleting just the beginning sound. Here, begin by asking your child to say a word, and then say the word again without the beginning sound. For example, “Say ram. Now say it again without the /r/.” Your child should give “am.” As your child gets more confident in their ability, begin to ask them to take away blends and then just the first sound of the blend. For example, “Say slant. Now say it without the /sl/.” And “Say blot. Now say it without the /b/.”

Ending Sounds

The next skill to focus on is deleting the ending sound of a word to make a new word. Ending sounds tend to be a little trickier than beginning sound deletion because your little one needs to process through all the sounds in the word to find the ending sound. For example, “Say rake. Now say it again without the /k/.” You child should give “ray.” Again, begin to add in ending blends as your child grows in their abilities to delete sounds at the end of words. For example, “Say land. Now say it again without the /nd/.” And “Say plant. Now say it again without the /t/.”

A Challenge

As your child grows in their ability, they can begin to delete the other sound in the blend. For blends at the beginning of words, ask your child to delete the second sound in the blend. For example, “Say black. Now say it again without the /l/.” Your child should give “back.” For blends at the end of the word, ask your child to delete the first sound in the blend. This is by far the trickiest as the vowel often attaches to this sound in your child’s mind. For example, “Say list. Now say it again without the /s/.” Your child should give “lit.”

Activities to Develop Sound Deletion Skills

Sound Boxes

Sound boxes are great for working on deletion of sounds. Your child can place a chip for each sound in the orginal word. Now your child can remove the chip for the sound that is deleted. This helps your child to focus on the sounds that remain in the word.

Sound Deletion Picture Match

For this activity, you will want to brainstorm a list of words where deleting a sound in one word produces a new real word. Anywhere between 5 and 10 words in usually a great start. Once you have this list, find a picture or object for all the words. The pictures support your child while working on deleting phonemes because they are limited to the picture choices to begin.

Let’s say you have the pictures for rain and ray, maid and may, meat and me, tie and eye, moose and moo. I would begin with rain while showing my child the pictures for ray, may, me, eye, and moo. Then I would ask my child, “Say rain without /n/.” They should then choose the picture of the ray to support their sound deletion development.

Name Sound Deletion

For this activity, you add a sound into a name of someone your child is familiar with and see if they can figure out the person. This can be a little tricky with some names, but most names offer a quick and easy way to add a sound either as a beginning or ending blend. Names that begin with a vowel are even easier because you can add any sound. A few examples include, Slara for Sara, Towen for Owen, Kathin for Kathy, Blob for Bob, and Karent for Karen.

Animal Sounds Deletion

Animal sounds offer a great way to practice sound deletion with children. Many animal sounds end in a vowel sound so you can easily add a sound to the end for your child to delete. Plus, they will love to correct your animal sounds when you provide a silly answer. For example, “Sheep say blah,” “Cows say moon,” “Mice say seek,” “Owls say hoop,” or “Ducks say squack.” Your child will have lots of fun correcting you with the sound that the animals actually say. Be sure to take a moment to talk about the sound they deleted to arrive at the correct response.

The more your child grows in their manipulation of sounds, the more their reading and writing skills will grow. If you notice your child struggling with reading at any point, check their phonemic awareness skills for areas of improvement. These skills go hand and hand with your child’s phonics development and ability to read and write words.

Don’t miss the next post in the learning to read series, Sight Words. Sight Words moves beyond phonemic awareness and begins to prepare your child to read short books. These words provide your child the bridge words needed to use their phonemic awareness skills, paired with their phonics skills, to read sentences and books. If you enjoyed this post, drop of us comment below. We’d love to hear about your favorite manipulation and deletion activities. For more parenting tips, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter below.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.