W for Woohoo! Letter W Sound "woo".
The letter W makes the "Woo" sound /w/. "Woo" as in "WIN" or "WASH". Say /woooooo/. To make this sound, your lips come together to make a tight round shape, and the /w/ consonant sound is made by the vocal cords.
There is another rather similar /oo/ sound that's represented by the "OO" digraph. The mouth takes the same shape and position in making the /oo/ sound; however, there is a subtle but important difference between these two phonemes.
The double "O" /oo/ sound is a lighter and "higher up" sound compared to the /w/ sound. What that means is when you make the /ooooo/ sound, it comes from higher up within your mouth. The /w/ sound on the other hand, comes from lowered down within your throat. Try these words and compare the /w/ and /oo/ sounds.
F-OO-D and L-OO-P
vs.
W-I-N and W-I-SH
You'll notice that /w/ is a deeper sound, and the vibration made in the vocal cords is much more noticeable.
Learning Activity for /w/
- Make a printout for the letter W on a piece of paper
- Prepare printouts for the follow W words:
- WIN
- WEB
- WAND
- WALL
- WORK
- WING
- WATER
- Show the letter W to your child and explain how to make the proper /w/ "woo" sound.
- Let your child try making the /w/ sound several times.
- Practice the W sound with the word list provided above. Sound out the /w/ sound in each of the words.
- Phoneme identification exercise: ask your child to find and say all the /w/ sounds in each of the words.
- Phoneme deletion activity:
- If we remove /w/ from WIN, what word is it now? (IN)
- If we get rid of the /w/ sound from WAND, what word does it become? (AND)
- Remove /w/ sound from WALL and what do you get? (ALL)
- You can also work on phoneme substitution activities as well. For example, if you substitute the /w/ sound in WIN with a /b/ sound, what does it become? (BIN)
- Work on the printable worksheet provided below for letter W.
Letter W Worksheets
