Let’s Talk Sound Play!
We all want our children to experience success when they start learning to read and write at school and many of us begin to introduce our children to the alphabet and letter-sounds in the year leading up to this.
But did you know that there are other very important pre-requisite skills that research tells us predict success with literacy? Today I want to give you a heads up on one of these skills... developing your child’s phonological awareness skills.
Phonological awareness refers to your child’s awareness of the sound structure of spoken words and includes the ability to manipulate and ‘play’ with sounds (without referring to letters).
From the age of around 4 years old you may notice your child running around the house shouting things like “The bee did a wee” convinced they are the next up-and-coming comedian! While you may roll your eyes at this, these are positive signs that your child is developing the foundational skills they need to recognise and identify the sounds and sound patterns in words which will serve them well when they are introduced to written words and the many patterns that govern how we read and spell them.
It is a good idea to have as much fun as you can developing these skills at home. There is great variation in how much explicit phonological awareness input is provided within early childhood centres and year 1 classrooms. Therefore, it would not be wise to assume that your child is learning these skills explicitly elsewhere.
Research also tells us that your child is more likely to have weaknesses in his or her phonological awareness skills and at higher risk of experiencing difficulties learning to read, spell and write if he or she has a history of speech and/or language difficulties.
Additionally, if your child has already been at school for a few years and is not keeping up with his or her peers in literacy, an assessment of phonological awareness skills is highly recommended to investigate any underlying weaknesses in this area. Your child may need to be taught these skills explicitly as part of their daily literacy program.
Skills that come under the umbrella of ‘Phonological Awareness’ are:
Recognising when words rhyme (e.g. “Do ‘book’ and ‘shoe’ rhyme?”)
Coming up with a word that rhymes? (e.g. “What rhymes with ‘tea’?”)
Segmenting sentences into words (e.g. “Clap for each word your hear in the sentence ‘The cat is furry’”)
Blending syllables (e.g. “I am going to say parts of a word. Tell me what the whole word is. ‘ta-ble’”)
Segmenting syllables (e.g. “Clap for each syllable you hear in the word ‘butterfly’”)
Deleting a syllable (e.g. “Say the word ‘strawberry. Now say it without saying ‘straw’.”)
Identifying first, last and middle sounds in words (e.g., “What sound do you hear at the end, beginning or middle of ‘cook’?”)
Blending sounds (e.g., “Put these sounds together to make a word. ‘b-a-g’”)
Segmenting sounds (e.g., “Tell me each sound you hear in the word ‘dog’?”)
Deleting sounds (e.g., “Say ‘share.’ Now say it without the ‘sh.’”)
Adding sounds (e.g., “Say ‘cook.’ Now say it with an ‘ee’ at the end.”)
Manipulation of sounds (e.g., “Change the ‘s’ in ‘sad’ to a ‘b’”)
Preschoolers are only expected to be able to demonstrate rhyme, sentence and syllable awareness, but many can identify the first, last sounds and blend 2-3 sounds together orally by the time they start school.
So how can we build this kind of sound play into our daily routines and still make it fun?
Here are some of my top tips:
Use your natural interactions to model sound play in a fun way and do it DAILY (e.g. while your child’s chatting at mealtimes, getting dressed for school, in the car or while waiting to see the dentist). For example, while your child is getting dressed and looking for his sock why not make up a silly rhyme (e.g. The clock goes tick tock as Jack looks for his sock)?
Build phonological awareness skills into your verbal instructions (e.g. “Go and get your c/oa/t”, “Have you got you b/a/g?” “It’s b/a/th time!”).
Read a rhyming book to your child each night before bed and emphasize the rhyming words with your voice as you read. Dr. Seuss books are great for this activity. After reading a book, ask your child to remember as many of the rhyming words as he/she can.
Sing favourite rhymes with rhythm such as “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake” and “Humpty Dumpty”
While riding in the car, say a sentence to your child but leave the last word blank. Ask your child to provide a rhyming word. For example, say “I see a dog on a _______.” Your child could say, “log,” “hog,” “bog,” or “frog.”
Build sound play into lego/puzzle play or craft activities by adding a block/piece of puzzle/bead for each syllable or sound you hear in a word (e.g. bu/tter/fly = 3 lego pieces to add to the tower).
At dinnertime, play a game of ‘telephone’. Whisper a 5–7 word sentence into the person’s ear to your right and have that person whisper in the ear of the person to his/her right. Continue until each member of the dinner table has a chance to listen and whisper. The last person to hear the sentence says it aloud.
Go on a scavenger hunt for objects that contain a certain sound (e.g. /b/) in the park or around the house.
Mystery bag game: Place rhyming objects or pictures into a mystery bag and take turns to pull two out. If they rhyme, the player keeps them. If not, they go back in the bag. The person with the most rhyming pairs of objects wins!
Play ‘I Spy..’ in several ways:
“I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with…”
“I spy with my little eye something that sounds like…c/a/t”
“I spy with my little eye something that ends in the sound…/t/”
Most of all, have fun and enjoy watching your child’s sound awareness grow!
Donna Jaynes
Speech Language Therapist