Taking advantage of today's technology and the ability for kids to play safe, interactive phonics games on the Internet is something teachers all over the country are excited about. Not only are these online phonics games useful and informative, they make learning phonics easy and fun for kids from preschool all the way through the second grade, and sometimes beyond. So, where do you find all of these great phonics games. Here are some top rate sites that you might like to use in your classroom.

Preschool/Kindergarten Sites

Starfall.com

This website offers interactive games that preschool and kindergarten students can play that teach ABCs, short vowel sounds, consonant sounds, long vowel sounds, site words, and more with colorful videos. The narrator in each video is very deliberate with emphasizing the concept that the student is to learn, which makes it easier for the student to grasp the concepts. The site is also great for kindergarten students who learning to read short books and progressing to reading on their own. You can also choose to printout free worksheets for students to use in the classroom or take home.

Fun School at Kaboose.com

This is a very fun and educational site for preschool and kindergarten students. The phonics games are on target for the recommended skills they should be learning at these ages. Preschoolers can learn their ABCs, do letter matching, and of course, learn all about vowels and consonants, and more. They also offer printable worksheets for your convenience and to help students reinforce important concepts learned in the classroom.

First Grade Sites

Professor Garfield.com

This website has fun phonics games for first graders, such as "Fishing for Phonics," which teaches beginning and ending consonant sounds.

Have More Fun (http://www.quia.com/pages/havemorefun.html)

Here you will find all the skills that first graders are learning taught through interactive games that really grab your attention. They are over 50 games to choose from, each concentrating on a specific concept, such as phonological awareness, rhyming activities, beginning and ending consonant sounds, diphthongs, digraphs, and much more.

Kids Lab (http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/elementary/palmasola/SRW1.htm)

There is an abundant amount of information and fun games for first graders here at Kids Lab. Their first grade section includes introducing and reinforcing the following topics:

• Vocabulary Development
• Phonics and Phonemic Awareness
• Reading Comprehension

Each section has multiple activities for students to perform based on the general topic area. They offer Kids Lab for kindergarten and second grade students as well.

Second Grade Sites

Kids Lab (http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/elementary/palmasola/SRW2.htm)

As mentioned above, Kids Lab is a great online resource for students. The second grade activities include the same topics as in first grade, but the activities are geared for what second grade students should be learning as it pertains to phonics. Of course, by second grade students are becoming better and more fluent readers, and Kids Lab knows that. They offer activities such as contractions, compound words, homophones, consonant and vowel practice pages, and much more on reading comprehension.

I Know That.com

This site offers fun interactive games for second graders that teach and reinforce letter blends, silent letters, "y" as a vowel, review of concepts learned in earlier grades, as well as games playing with nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and much more. They even have games dealing with punctuation. The characters are funny, so kids this age will be thrilled to play educational games online.