Let's play with sounds!

Early emergent readers are attaching a visual images or letters, to the sounds in a word.  If you think about how your toddler began to speak, his or her first words attached to something visual that held meaning to them.  The toddler heard an utterance that connected to the image and learned the connection.  Early readers are doing the same thing.  They are attaching speech to print.

One key to developing reading skills is the discrimination and manipulation of sounds.  Your toddler and early reader will benefit from rhyme and rhythm in songs and conversation.  The song, "Down By The Bay," gives you the chance to say an animal and your child to give a rhyming ending to the verse.  "Have you ever seen a goat in a _______? Down by the bay."    Fun for car rides, too!

Short vowel sounds can be fun to play with, especially when there is a manipulative to add to the exercise.  In the picture below, we are just concentrating on the sound in the middle of the word. But, first we pull down a chip for each sound, segmenting one sound at a time.  Then, tap the middle sound.  Say just that sound.  Tap the plastic egg or the plastic apple.  Which one matches that middle sound?  We work on just the sounds, no printed letters are needed.   This practice exercises a skill called phonological awareness, a critical foundation in the development of word recognition skills.