4 Sound Awareness Activities for Your Preschooler

Around age three, your child is becoming more aware of individual sounds and syllables in spoken language know as phonological awareness. Some things he may notice are rhyming words in nursery rhymes and predictable books and commenting on familiar words in books. The following are 4 sound awareness activities to do with your child to nurture sound awareness:

1. Make new rhymes for familiar rhyming pairs - hall/ball
2. Say four simple rhyming words and include one word that doesn't rhyme - ask your child to tell you the word that doesn't rhyme - ball/hall/yes/tall
3. Clap syllable segments of familiar family and friend names - Sarah - how many claps, 2 Sa/rah
4. Find words on a page that begin with the same letter sound

Continue reading nursery rhymes, poems and singing songs. If your child is able to rhyme words make a game of it: you say a word and then your child can come up with a rhyme for it. Point out words that begin with the same sound and say them with your child such as the title of the book, "Silly Sally" and rhymes "Little Miss Muffit" "BaBa Black Sheep". These are oral language and listening activities for sound play - the focus is not on written letters and words.

Susan