Sightwords.com
Phonemic awareness is the ability to split up and rearrange individual sounds within words.
Phonological awareness is the ability to divide spoken language into units, such as words and syllables. Before diving into individual sounds within words (phonemic awareness), we teach children to pay attention to more obvious sounds. We start with environmental noises, then move into sentences, whole words, and then syllables. Only after a child can divide words into syllables do we start teaching the phonemic awareness part of our curriculum.
A child with good phonemic awareness, who is ready to start learning phonics, will have mastered the skills of blending, splitting, and substituting the sounds in words — phonemes.