Phonological awareness is a term used by educators to refer to a child's ability to discriminate the sounds that make up words.  When children are first learning words, they chunk the individual sounds that make up words in to a single unit of sound.  Learning to discriminate the "buh" sound in "ball" is challenging, but it is an essential skill for learning phonics later in elementary school. Adults can help preschoolers develop their phonological awareness  by reading books with alliteration, like Princess Pigtoria and the Pea by Pamela Duncan Edwards.  The abundance of words that start with the letter 'p' in the text provides an opportunity for adults to call attention to the sound of 'p' in so many words.  "My palace looks like a pigsty.  If only I had enough pennies to have it painted."  After reading several pages, ask your preschooler to identify a word that starts with the sound of 'p' as you read.  If your child can do this with ease, point out that all the words that start with that sound, are also all spelled with the letter "p".  This is the "alphabetic principle": that letters represent the sounds in words.  Sharing this type of information about how reading works in the context of reading helps young children understand the function of the rules they sometimes hear (example:"'P' makes the 'puh' sound.").