This is a fun, hands-on activity to help your pre-k or kindergarten students practice phoneme segmentation or syllables. This french fry phoneme or syllable activity is highly engaging because it uses something familiar to children and it also includes a tactile element. Children love to put the sponges in and take them out of the boxes.
I have used french fry boxes in the classroom before that I obtained from my local fast food restaurant. However, I didn’t have any lying around this time so a quick Google search led me to the perfect printable french fry box template here.
Supporting Research
Research has shown that a child’s awareness of the sounds in spoken words is a strong predictor of later success in learning to read.” (IRA) A child who can hear the sounds in a word and can tell where those sounds occur is developing strong pre-reading skills. Even before a child learns to identify the letters of the alphabet, he or she can produce sounds by speaking and listening to the sounds in spoken language.
Materials Needed
- Cheap yellow sponges
- Cardstock (color of your choice)
- French fry box template {found HERE}
- Scissors
- Glue
- Picture cards {found HERE}
Assembly
First, print your french fry box template on the cardstock color of your choice. Print as many copies as you will need, one per child in your small group. Next, cut out your templates and fold them along the dotted lines. The directions at the link call for scoring along the lines with a fancy tool but I just used the sharp edge of my scissors and it worked perfectly. Once you have folded your boxes along the lines then glue the sides together. Finally, cut your yellow sponges to create the fries. It only took me fifteen minutes to print, cut, and assemble five boxes, which is much less time than it would have taken me to drive to the store and buy them. The total cost for this project was $1 for the sponges; I had all the other materials on hand.
Directions for Use
Give each child in your small group a french fry box and place the french fries in the center of the table so they are easily accessible to the children. Show the picture cards to the students and have them identify each one. Then, explain the skill you are going to work on in kid friendly terms and demonstrate the skill. For example, if you are going to ask students to isolate phonemes you might say, “Now I’m going to show you the pictures again and this time we’re going to listen to each sound in the word.” Demonstrate how you will count the phonemes as you hear them and place the corresponding number of french fries in your box. You could also teach syllables using this activity; it depends on what your students are ready for.
You can find a set of free, printable syllable cards HERE. The one syllable cards could also be used for the phoneme segmentation activity.
