Looking for phoneme substitution activities? These Phoneme Substitution Cards are for students learning to change the sound in words. Designed to build essential phonemic awareness skills, these cards are the perfect tool for phoneme manipulation activities, teaching children how to substitute initial, medial, and final sounds to create new words.

This comprehensive resource contains 90 phoneme substitution task cards:

• 30 Beginning Sound Cards

• 30 Medial (middle) Sound Cards

• 30 Ending Sound Cards

The cards are illustrated with real-life pictures, so your students will easily recognise and relate to the images. 

PLUS, there are other BONUS resources in this pack! 

Keep Your Kindergarten Students Engaged

This hands-on phoneme manipulation activity keeps students actively engaged. Using these cards is pretty straightforward but highly effective in holding student interest. 

They are a fun way to learn how to substitute sounds in words. 

This important skill lays the foundation for strong writing and reading skills so use these cards to help your students develop a deeper understanding of how to manipulate the sounds in words and have fun doing it. .

Build Phonemic Awareness and Phoneme Substitution Skills

Phoneme manipulation is a phonemic awareness skill that covers adding, deleting and substituting the sounds in words. It is a critical step in building phonemic awareness. This important skill requires students to change the individual phonemes or speech sounds in a word so they can create a new word. 

The differentiated picture cards in this resource will give your students practice changing the sounds at the beginning, middle, or end of words.

Your students will practice 

• phoneme deletion

• phoneme addition

• phoneme substitution

Phoneme substitution is one of the more difficult phonemic awareness skills so your students will need lots of practice. That’s why I designed this set of Phoneme Substitution Cards. They are a practical and hands-on way for students to practice deleting a sound from a word and then changing it with a new sound to make a new word! 

The Science of Reading research explains phonemic awareness as an oral and auditory skill, so these cards contain only pictures—no written words.

This Phoneme Substitution Resource Contains:

• 30 cards for initial sound substitution

• 30 cards for medial sound substitution

• 30 cards for final sound substitution

• Answer key

• 4 Printable learning prompts

• 4 printable recording sheets

No more trying to think up suitable words on the spot or trying to source suitable images. 

Download this set of 90 phoneme manipulation cards, and you’ll have plenty to choose from.

Differentiate Your Literacy Instruction

The various photo illustrations on these cards make differentiation easy..

The colour-coded cards help you find the perfect task for your students. Use the green cards if you are looking at initial phonemes or sounds in the beginning of words. They are perfect for initial sound deletion exercises.

Working on vowel sounds in the middle of words? Use the brown cards to challenge students to substitute either long and short vowel sounds.

Of course you can work on final phonemes too. Just use the green cards if you want to focus on final letter sounds. 

This phonemic awareness resource not only includes a variety of CVC words with short vowel sounds but also features images representing long vowel sounds, blends, and common digraphs.

This resource is a comprehensive tool for diverse learning needs.

Perfect for:

• hands-on literacy investigation areas

• a literacy center

• small group literacy rotations

• literacy intervention

• morning tubs

• busy bags

• early finishers

• homework

• or to inform your assessment grades

2 Ways to Use These Phoneme Substitution Cards

1. Orally in small groups: Use the cards to say the name of each picture with the students. Ask them what sound changed in the word: beginning, middle or ending sound?

2. Hands-On Independent Work: Use the cards in literacy centers or investigation areas. To build phonemic awareness, students manipulate the individual sounds orally using the pictures. More advanced students can progress to writing the new word or making it with letter tiles or magnetic letters.

Use these phonemic awareness task cards in your phonemic awareness lessons and phonemic awareness activities.

Then use them again when you start your phonics instruction and focusing on phonics skills. I love a resource that you can use over and over in the classroom.