When children have to construct or deconstruct words, they are developing their phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds within words. The stronger a child's phonemic awareness, the easier time he will have learning to read and spell. Play a game where you provide a word's phonemes, and see if your child can figure out the word. For example, say, "Go get a /f/ /or/ /k/." Your child will have to put the individual sounds together to make sense of the word (fork).