This 60-card deck was created to build phonological skills as a foundation for success with reading in children and adults of all ages! 
 
There are 6 categories of phonological awareness featured that are known to be very important to build a child's literacy skills. The focus of these cards is to listen and respond, not to read, because the goal is to build up the child's capabilities to hear and recognize the individual sounds and syllables in the given words. 
 
The phonological skills featured in this Small Talk Level A deck are: 
Blending (the ability to hear two or more syllables/sounds separately when spoken, with pauses, by the adult and to blend the parts into a full word) 
Rhyming (the ability to tell if two or more words rhyme [identification], and also being able to provide a rhyming word to the one given [production]) 
Segmenting (the ability to take one word and segment each syllable or sound into it's individual parts by pausing in between each part) 
Isolating (the ability to pinpoint the first, last, and middle sounds of a word) 
Substituting (the ability to take one syllable or sound and exchange it for another in the first, last, or middle part of a word) 
Deleting (the ability to remove a syllable or sound from a word in the first or last position) 
 
The sounds and letters features in this Small Talk Level A deck are: 
Short vowels (A,E,I,O,U) 
Initial blends- 
"S" blends (sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw, and tw) 
"L" blends (bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, and sl) 
"R" blends (br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, and tr) 
Digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh) 
 
This deck is best intended for a five-minute practice several times a week or once a day, depending on the facilitator's schedule. 
 
Intended for ages 3+