Learning letters and their sounds get little ones ready to read, right?
Wrong!!! (Well, that was rather abrasive and negative. I’m sorry. Please see it as passion and not negativity)
Letters and sounds, letters and sounds, letters and sounds. You could find thousands of activities to practice these skills with your little ones on this crazy internet. Hundreds of them right here on my own little piece of the internet in fact. (Apparently, I am part of the problem.)
There is such a focus on having little ones learn their letters and sounds—but that is simply one piece to learning to read.
The Importance of Phonological Awareness
There are 7 skills that are rarely mentioned or explained when talking about getting kids ready to read, but they are 100% essential.
These skills are known as phonological awareness:
- Rhyming
- Word Awareness
- Syllable Awareness
- Sound Identification
- Sound Segmenting (you are here)
- Sound Blending
- Deleting Sounds
Without these 7 skills, children will not become incredibly strong readers.
And let’s face it, incredibly strong readers are set up for success in every academic area in school. Reading is everywhere!
So the teacher in me got together with the Mama in me and wrote an entire learn-to-read program called How Wee Read.
They had oodles of coffee, a little bit of wine (just to make it fun), and wrote down everything little ones need to know right from pre-reading skills, through to letters and sounds, and into reading!
They (okay, this is getting weird, I don’t have a split personality) I wrote down every fun way I could think of to practice these skills. We need our little ones to know that reading is fun! And these simple activities are FUN. They have been tested on my little ones again and again.
While all seven skills and playful activities can be found in How Wee Read, I also wanted to share a few of these skills right here, starting with Sound Segmenting.
What is Sound Segmenting?
Sound Segmenting is taking a word and stretching it apart. This skill is very important to develop for future writing as well as reading.
It is also important to note that these phonological awareness skills are all auditory in nature—hearing the sounds, not knowing the letters that go along with these sounds (though how to teach this skill is also covered in How Wee Read!).
Here is a fun activity to practice sound segmenting in a cute little video. It is only about 15 seconds long:
When learning Sound Segmenting, begin with three sound words, such as cat, bat, hat, dog, log.
The button flick game is a great way to help little ones concentrate on each sound. One movement for one sound.
Another idea is to line up three balls and kick one ball for each sound. Sometimes, big movements help little ones really learn with their whole bodies.
There are so many ways to play with this skill—get creative and have some fun playing!
For absolutely everything you need to teach your child to read—from rhyming to reading—take a peek at How Wee Read right here:
https://shop.howweelearn.com/pages/how-wee-read
Thank you so much for reading friends. I hope your week is off to a fabulous start. I will be here again in a day or two to share a fun craft we have been slightly obsessed with (okay, I… I have been slightly obsessed with… the kids think it’s okay.)
xo
Sarah
I teach by example, sounding out the Hooked on Phonics books.
This is a great idea – it is so helpful to teach these skills as you are going through books with little ones. Thank you for sharing!