Skill 1: Rhyming (3:02)
- Rhyming is saying a word and then choosing a word that has a similar or same sound ending. First, recognize words that do rhyme and words that do not rhyme and then have your child produce rhymes.
- Activity: Put 2 cardboard ramps on a staircase or elevated surface, each one with a word at the bottom. Then, using cars or some rolling object that has a word attached to it, have your child pick which ramp to roll it down.
Skill 2: Word Awareness (4:09)
- Word awareness involves knowing when a word begins and when it ends. Children develop this skill through a lot of practice.
- Activity: Get a bin of blocks, and have your child build a tower using a song they are familiar with, pulling out one block for each word in the song.
Skill 3: Syllable Awareness (5:21)
- After learning word awareness, children should work towards syllable awareness, recognizing how many sounds are in one word.
- Activity: Empty out your junk drawer. Put sticky notes on your table, each with a number corresponding to the number of syllables in the word. For each item in the junk drawer, have your child determine how many syllables are in it by holding his/her hand under his/her chin while saying the word. Then, have them put the item with the correct sticky note according to the number of syllables in the word.
Skill 4: Sound Identification (5:32)
- Sound identification involves three stages: recognizing the sounds of the word at the beginning, middle, and end.
- Activity: For the first stage (recognizing the beginning sounds of the word), have your child walk around the room with a basket, collecting objects that share that same beginning sound. Do the same for the ending sounds and middle sounds once he/she has mastered the former.
Skill 5: Sound Segmenting (8:14)
- Sound segmenting is pulling words apart.
- Activity: Have your child say a word slowly in order to better hear the individual sounds that make it up.
Skill 6: Sound Blending (8:39)
- Sound blending is pushing sounds together to form a word.
- Activity: Say three sounds really slow, and then have your child guess what word that could be. Then, continue to say the sounds faster/closer together until he/she can hear the word.
Skill 7: Deleting Sounds (9:30)
- What would the word be if you were to take out one sound?
- Activity: Watch the video for an example of this activity.
For a more elaborate description of each skill and a demonstration of each activity, click the timestamp to find that section of the video.
