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Last week I wrote a post called Let’s Talk While We Read. This week’s literacy topic phonological awareness is also based on a lot of talk. Phonological awareness has to do with the rhythm and rhyme of words.

Ways to Work on Phonological Awareness:

Birth to 2-years old

• Say or read nursery rhymes so your child hears the rhyme. Stress the rhyming words.
• Sing to hope your child hear syllables in words. In most songs, each syllable get a different note.
• Make up your own silly, nonsense rhymes.

2 to 3-years old

• Play word games such as, “What sounds like ran?” or “What starts with the same sound as ball?”
• Point out initial sounds and ask what other words start with that sound.
• Clap out the number of syllables in children’s names or other people and places

4 to 5-years old

• Ask whether two words rhyme: Do cat and dog rhyme? Do cat and hat rhyme?
• Say words with a word segment left out: “What word would we have if we took the sea away from seahorse?”
• Put two word segments together to make a word: “What word would we have if we put cup and cake together?”

How we work on these skills at our house:

• I love rhyming with JDaniel in the car. We run through the alphabet to find words that make sense with a word family. Ie: all, ball, call, dall, eall, fall .
• I printed out picture cards for JDaniel. We identify one of the pictures and beat it out on his toy drum.
• Rhyming Mat Game from Pre-K Literacy. The site has three mats like the one below.
• Activity Mom had a Rhyming Bingo that came from HeidiSongs on her site we are going to use.

Online Activities

• Rhyming Words with Reggie
  

Ways to Work on Narrative Skills

• Talk about what you are doing. My son asks me all the time, “What are you doing.” Sometimes I am just driving the car.
• Tell your child stories and make up silly songs.
• Encourage your toddler to tell you about things.
• Listen patiently and ask questions. Reread favorite books over and over again

• Have them tell you about their day
• Talk about what is happening first, next, and last in a story.
• Have them read you their favorite book.

• Ask questions like “What do you think is happening in this picture?” and “What might happen next?”
• Add adjectives to words your child says. If he says, “ Dump truck”, say “yellow John Deer dump truck.”
• Have your child tell you what is happening in a picture they have drawn.

How do we do this at our house?

• It is the most natural part of reading.  We chat about the pictures and story as we read.
• We try not to break the flow or rhythm of the story. It may mean reading the story and than going back and asking questions if asking them during the story will keep JDaniel from enjoying the book.
• We keep favorite books out where we will encounter them and can talk about them.
• We don’t do it every time we read a book.
  How do you share while you are reading?

Birth to 2- years old

• Have your child hold the book.
• Point to words in books with few words
• Have them track the words on the page while holding their finger. Go from left to right.
• Read aloud labels, signs, menu, etc..

2 to 5- years old

• Point to some of the words as you say them
• Have your child turn the pages
• Have your child walk you through the story and tell it to you
• Hold the book upside down and see what they do

I don’t have a lot to add to these ideas. They are all basic skills needed to interact with a book and the written word in the world around them. They just need to be practiced over and over again. I don’t mean until your child is bored with them. I do mean until they seem to own them.

Two friends and I took our children to the Hughes Library in downtown Greenville to experience Laugh’n’ Learn Reading Readiness at the beginning of the summer. It was six interactive centers set up to share ideas on helping your child learn pre-reading skills. We had a great time exploring each of the centers and seeing what each of our children gravitated towards. I decided to share what I learned and how I set up activities for each skill in my home.

Today will begin the first of six installments in the Setting Up a Literacy Center series. We will be looking at vocabulary development and the tools we are using to work on them.

Ways to Work on Vocabulary Birth to 2-years old

• Talk to your baby or toddler about what is going on around you.
• Listen carefully and respond to your baby’s babbles or your child’s talk.
• Ask questions even if your child does not have the words to answer.
• Read together every day. Name the pictures as you point to them.

2 to 3-years old

• Talk about everything! The more words your child hears, the more they will know.
• Be specific. (use the word “rose” rather than “flower”)
• Add more detail to what your child says. ( the “red” rose)

4 to 5-years old

• Talk about feelings, ideas, and how things work.
• Speak in a language that is most comfortable for you.
• Learn by reading nonfiction books on subjects your child likes.

Here are some of the tools we are using: Grocery Store We put together a store using a shelf in the pantry. It contains the following

• • Empty food boxes
  • A shopping basket
  • Reusable shopping bag
  • An old calculator ( The calculator is used as a scanner and register.)
  • Play money
  • A grocery store name tag JDaniel was given while taking a tour of a local grocery store.
    

I am usually the shopper. I ask JDaniel for products and he bags them after scanning them. He loves making the beep sound for the scanner. We talk about what he has available and what he thinks I should buy. JDaniel also loves to shop and sell to himself.