Capstone Phonics Learning Progression

Children learn to:

• Listening to voices and sounds
   
• Copying sounds and simple words

• Feeling Rhymes and rhythm
   
• Naming objects & actions

• Using 2–3 word phrases. (“More juice”, “big ball”) 

Activities

• Circle time, name songs 

• Animal sounds, echo games 

• Clapping, nursery rhymes 

• Picture books, real objects

Children learn to:

• Listen and respond to sounds
   
• Identify environmental sounds (clap, bell, animal sounds)
   
• Recognize rhymes and rhythm
   
• Hear syllables in words (ap-ple, ba-na-na)
   
• Identify beginning sounds orally (“What sound does ball start with?”)
   

Activities

• Rhyming songs & poems
   
• Sound guessing games
   
• Clapping syllables
   
• Call-and-response chants
   

Children learn to:

• Recognize A–Z (uppercase first, then lowercase)
   
• Match uppercase to lowercase
   
• Identify letters in their own name
   
• Notice letters in books and classroom labels
   

Activities

• Alphabet songs
   
• Name puzzles
   
• Letter matching games
   
• Sensory tracing (sand, playdough, finger paint)
   

Children learn:

• Each letter has a sound
   
• Start with most common sounds (not letter names only)
   
• Focus on beginning sounds first
   

Typical order (example):

• m, s, a, t, b, p, c, d (easy to hear & say)
   
• Short vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u)
   

Activities

• Sound baskets (“What starts with /b/?”)
   
• Picture sorting by initial sound
   
• Movement-based sound games
   

Children begin to:

• Blend 2–3 sounds orally (c-a-t)
   
• Recognize simple CVC words (cat, dog, sun)
   
• Understand that sounds combine to make words
   

Activities

• Oral blending games (“I say /c/ /a/ /t/ — you say?”)
   
• Picture-word matching
   
• Magnetic letters with teacher guidance
   

Children practice:

• Hearing beginning sounds
   
• Counting sounds in short words
   
• Saying each sound slowly
   

Activities

• Sound tapping with fingers
   
• Elkonin boxes (sound boxes with counters)
   
• Stretching words (“ssss-un”)
   

Focus on:

• Child’s name
   
• Simple functional words (a, the, I, see)
   
• Recognition, not memorization drills
   

Children learn:

• Books are read left to right
   
• Words are made of letters
   
• Spaces separate words
   
• Print carries meaning
   

Activities

• Shared reading
   
• Pointing to words while reading aloud
   
• Classroom labels