If you’re an early elementary teacher, you already know how important explicit phonics instruction is for building strong readers. Adding fun, purposeful songs to your lessons can boost engagement and help students better retain new skills. But let’s be honest, not all YouTube songs are created equal. To save you time, I’ve vetted and gathered the best phonics songs that effectively teach key phonics skills and work well in real classrooms.
Key Phonics Skills (and a Sample Progression)
Key phonics skills are the foundation of reading success in the elementary classroom. Through explicit instruction, students learn how sounds connect to letters and letter patterns, allowing them to decode unfamiliar words with confidence.
Below, you’ll find a sample progression chart of what to expect to teach/learn in each grade level!
| Stage | Phonics Focus | Sample Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Early Kindergarten | Phonological Awareness | Rhyming, syllables, onset & rime, isolating beginning sounds |
| Kindergarten | Letter–Sound Correspondence | Letter names & sounds, short vowels, CVC words |
| Late Kindergarten | Basic Word Patterns | Digraphs (sh, ch, th), consonant blends, simple word families |
| Grade 1 | Advanced Phonics Patterns | Long vowels, silent e, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels |
| Grade 2 | Multisyllabic Decoding | Prefixes/suffixes, syllable types, compound words |
| Grade 3 | Word Analysis & Fluency | Greek/Latin roots, complex vowel patterns, automatic decoding |
Songs That Teach Phonics and Reinforce Skills
Now that we have a bit of background about the progression of phonics skills, let’s dive into the fun phonics songs to help reinforce the skills. I’ve included (at least) one song for each key phonics skill!
1. Phonics Song (Alphabet)
This song is great to help familiarize students with each letter, its name, and the sounds that it makes.
It is just over 2 minutes long, so short enough to hold their attention, but long enough to cover all the letters.
Plus, it’s a catchy tune, so if you listen to it enough, your students will surely be singing it (and knowing the letter sounds before you explicitly teach each one!)
2. Rocco the Rhyming Rhino (Ryming)
There are plenty of fun rhyming songs to choose from; however, I like this one due to the use of Rocco the Ryming Rhino.
Having a fun character connected to a skill helps engage my students and gives me something to refer back to all year long!
PS. You’re going to be seeing a lot more of Jack Hartman on this list. He’s my favorite when it comes to catchy phonics tunes!
Bonus! In addition to this song, I always try to play Down by the Bay as well. We use this song throughout the year when we have downtime or need a rhyming refresher!
3. Clap It Out (Syllables)
This upbeat song gets students up and moving, and they have so much fun that they hardly notice they are learning.
However, they do go through the words pretty quickly, so it is important that you review a few of the words after the song.
4. The Syllable Song (Syllable Types)
Syllable types can be quite confusing to teach and understand. This song helps! With its use of anchor charts to match the words, students can see and hear it!
The background images and videos can be a bit silly, but they don’t take away from the content.
5. Phonemic Awareness Song (Segmenting Phonemes)
If it includes movement, words, and a song, I’m all in! This is a great choice for introducing phoneme segmentation in a fun, engaging way.
Segmenting words is an essential skill because it helps students hear and break apart individual sounds. When they touch their head, shoulders, and hips, it will help them to be able to isolate the phonemes down the road!
6. Little Fox Phonics Songs (Short Vowels)
This one is pretty long, but it does a great job with repeated practice of each short vowel. Plus, the cartoon is entertaining and full of examples!
7. These Are the Long Vowel Sounds Jack Hartmann (Long Vowels)
This Jack Hartmann song is good for long vowel sounds, but also great for identifying the vowels (thanks to the catchy tune).
He repeatedly reviews the vowel names in sequence and practices their sounds using fun visuals!
8. Scratch Garden (Digraphs)
I don’t know what it is about this talking slice of cheese, but my students are always extra engaged when I play a Scratch Garden video.
This video focuses on the sh sound, specifically; however, there is a video for each digraph. There are examples with fun animations and time for students to shout out their own answers.
9. The Diphthong Song (Diphthongs)
Another Jack Hartmann gem! This song incorporates hand motions to help students remember exactly what a diphthong is + introduces them to the most common diphthongs they will see.
After the introduction, it would of course be important to teach each one explicitly with plenty more examples.
10. The Vowel Teams (Vowel Teams)
This video is a fun, engaging way to introduce and reinforce vowel teams by helping students hear how two vowels work together to make one sound.
As students watch and listen, they can focus on identifying common vowel teams and connecting the sounds they hear to the letter patterns they see.
Scratch Garden also has really great vowel team videos that break each team down individually!
11. Little Fox (Consonant Blends)
This video blends the use of a song and short stories to help teach all about blends (sl, sp, and st).
Every year, I notice my students have difficulties in reading and spelling words with consonant blends. This video helps provide a concrete visual of the phonics skills.
12. The Rules of Bossy R (R-controlled Vowels)
R-controlled vowels are another tough rule for students to grasp. However, my students always love StoryBots songs as they do a great job of keeping them engaged while still being effective in teaching the skill.
The visuals and repetition help students connect the sound they hear to the spelling pattern, making this a great resource for both introducing and reinforcing r-controlled vowels.
13. Stretchy the Word Snake (Segmenting and Blending)
This song introduces a strategy that I have always found to be very effective for struggling readers. I like to stop this video when the letters are stretched apart and practice segmenting as a whole group.
After watching this video, I am able to remind them of Stretchy the word snake while they are reading as a tool in decoding.
14. Head, Body, Tail (Prefixes and Suffixes)
Once your students have a solid grasp of the basic phonics skills (usually towards the end of 2nd grade), you can use this video to introduce prefixes and suffixes.
The clear explanations and examples help students see how adding a prefix or suffix can create new words without changing the base word itself.
I like how the video uses “head, body, and tail” to give students a concrete visual of how prefixes and suffixes change a word.
15. How Do You Use the Silent ‘E’ (CVCe)
Another StoryBots song to close this list off! Again, this song does a wonderful job with storytelling that keeps my entire class engaged throughout the video.
In addition to showing the silent E rule, it also discusses the exceptions that lead to a great learning opportunity.
I like to do a sorting activity after this, where students can sort words that have a long vowel sound with a silent e vs. those that do not.
Free Phonics Pattern Letter Tiles
If you’re looking for an easy way to support phonemic awareness during your phonics lessons, these free printable letter tiles are a great place to start. They include all the key phonics patterns students need for hands-on word building, making them a perfect companion to phonics songs and whole-group instruction.
Students can manipulate the tiles as they blend, segment, and change sounds in words, helping them connect what they hear in songs to what they see in print.
Sign up above to get the free set and add an engaging, low-prep tool to your phonics routine!
I hope you’ve found phonics songs you can use in your classroom to reinforce skills and make learning fun!
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