Throughout my first few months as a guide, I have loved exploring the different ways we can support language development in the Children’s House. Children are constantly singing songs, listening to and telling stories, discussing images in our cultural folders, and exploring a great variety of language cards.

We are also regularly playing sound games throughout the day. Sound games support the child in developing phonemic awareness, which is their ability to hear and isolate the sounds that compose a word. We begin by playing games that isolate the first sound, followed by the last sound, middle sound, and eventually, phonetically sounding out each sound they hear in a word. We play games with objects or pictures, we use the names of children in the community, as well as really anything else we can think of! These games and their work with the sandpaper letters support the child in beginning to write phonetically and eventually reading!

Sound games are great to play at home- you could think of the first sound you hear in all of the names in your family, you could make a list of animals that begin with a certain sound, collect objects in the house that have a certain sound, or play a guessing game! The possibilities are endless! When playing these games, it is important to be mindful of how we are saying each letter sound, here is a great resource that allows you to hear each sound individually.

https://www.alldayprimary.com/phonetic-sounds

Kate