Learning the Letter J Sound /j/

When it comes to teaching children (or adults) to read, the first step is to first learn the different sounds associated with the different alphabet letters. Some letters (or combination of letters) can represent more than one sound. Once a child has learned some of the letter sounds, you can then progress on to the next step of teaching them to "combine" those sounds to read words.

The short video below shows a 3 year old child that reads phonetically and reads fluently. Practicing the /j/ sound:

In the letter sounds pages on our website, we teach all 26 alphabet letters from A to Z, and this page is for teach the letter J and its /j/sound. When you see letters enclosed by slashes (/j/), it denotes the sound of the letter.

It's usually quite difficult to describe the sounds of letters by print, so you'll need to figure out its sound by isolating it from different words which contain that particular letter. For letter J, please practice with these words, and try to isolate the /j/ sound.

JAM - J-AM - /j/ /a/ /m/

JUMP - J-UMP - /j/ /u/ /m/ /p/

JOG - J-OG - /j/ /o/ /g/

Learning Activity for /j/

• Print the letter J and lower-case j on a piece of paper, and spend several minutes working through the following steps:

1. Show the letter J to your child and show the child how to properly make the /j/ sound.
2. Have your child practice repeating the /j/ sound several times while pointing to the printed letter.
3. Practice the /j/ sound with the following words, and emphasize the /j/ sound in each word:
• JAM
• JET
• JUG
• JUMP
• JELLY
4. See if your child can think of other letter J words.
5. Work on the printable worksheet provided below for the letter J, and also read through the rhyme as well.

Letter J Worksheets

 

   

Letter J Rhyme and Song

John the Jester likes to eat jello,

and he's a jolly good ol'fellow.

John makes all flavors and colors of jello:

Strawberry, watermelon, banana, and apple;

Red, green, blue, orange, and yellow.

John the Jester just ate all his jello.

"Oh no," John the Jester says, "I have no more j-j-j-jello!"