By Emily on May 16, 2012
Lots of preschool classes spend a lot of time and emphasis on helping children clap out the syllables in words. It is an important skill in learning how to read, write and spell.
Why?
- it helps children deconstruct words to learn about how they are made
- it helps children guess whether it’s going to be a long word or a short word, which helps them when they are learning to spell
- it helps children simplify spelling by making long words into a series of short words (eg. fantastic = fan – tas – tic)
So, how to help your child learn to segment words into syllables?
Choose some great words…
- Start with their name – kids this age are pretty self-centred, so they’ll be most interested in counting the beats in their own name. Try first names, middle names, last names and other family names as well.
- Once your child has mastered their name, then move onto fun words like their favourite foods (apple, hamburger, XX), funny animals (crocodile, hippopotamus, kangaroo) and nonsense words (supercalafragilisticexpialadocious)
- Start with short words (2 syllables) and then move up to longer words.
- Steer clear of one syllable words right at the beginning – your child will try to add extra syllables to them to make them interesting! Wait till they’ve got the hang of it and then add them in so it doesn’t confuse them too much.
How to segment the words?
- Clap out the beats in short words – don’t worry about counting them just yet as that’s a very difficult task (saying the word, breaking it up, counting the beats AND remembering the number!)
- Or, you could touch the beats on your fingers.
- Or touch the beats on your body – move down from the head to the shoulders, waist, knees and toes.
- Lay out some hula hoops in a line on the floor. Step from one hoop to the next as you break the word into beats.
- Jump up and down for each beat in a word.
- Bang out the beats on a drum.
- Play a syllable version of ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?‘ – call out a word and the children have to step the number of syllables toward the ‘wolf’
- To further promote the letter-sound relationship, write the word out for your child, and help them chop it into the syllables.
Make it fun!
- Keep it quick and interesting – the novelty will wear off very quickly.
- Write out a few words and group them according to the number of syllables.
- Try it backwards – segment a word and get your child to guess what it is (eg. ko-a-la). You might need to provide some context at the beginning, as this is quite tricky (eg. I’m thinking of an animal, it’s a ko-a-la). Take turns and get them to give you some clues as well.
- Have a competition to find the longest name in your family, the longest city name in an atlas or the longest suburb name amongst your
friends (our suburb has 6 syllables – can anyone beat that?)
Have fun!
Emily
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Posted in Pre-Reading Skills | Tagged grouping, listening, literacy, pre-reading, syllables |
By Emily on May 13, 2012
Purple bathrooms flying through the air with the letter Y… another week of words…
Monday 14th May: Purple collage
Cut out lots of purple things from junk mail and catalogues to make a purple collage.
Tuesday 15th May: Bathroom Words 
Take a tour around your bathroom and name the objects in it so your child can learn the vocabulary you use in your house: bath, toilet, shower, sink, tap/faucet, plug, soap, towel, flannel/washcloth, fan, cabinet/cupboard, etc.
Wednesday 16th May: Bath Play
Make a huge bubble bath and use it to make funny hair and beards. If you’re brave, add some food colouring (but be prepared to scrub well afterwards!)
Thursday 17th May: Air transport
If you can, visit the airport to see the planes take off and land. Talk about where the people are going, the jobs that people on the plane have, where they might be going, and where they might have come from. If you can’t get to the airport, read a book about the airport, or look at pictures of aeroplanes on the internet.
Friday 18th May: Air transport
What else flies in the air? Hot air balloons, gliders, jets, rockets, space ships, etc. Look them up in a book or on the internet.
Saturday 19th May: The Letter Y 
Look through junk mail, catalogues and newspapers to find the letter Y. Chop them out and stick them in the shape of a letter Y.
Sunday 20th May: Y is for Yummy
Look through the grocery catalogues and make a book about all of the food that you think is yummy!
Have fun!
Emily
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Posted in Ideas for Every Day | Tagged categories, colours, sensory play, the letter y, the y sound, vocabulary |
By Emily on May 9, 2012
If your little one has a restricted range of sounds, and his* talking is very difficult to understand, you will probably notice that:
- people will ask him to repeat what he said so that they understand
- people will smile and say something generic like ‘oh, really?’
- people will have a guess at what your child said – sometimes right and sometimes wrong
- people will look to you to interpret for them
All of these experiences can be discouraging to your child’s communication attempts, and may result in him being less happy talking to people outside his comfort zone. On top of this, it limits his ability to learn and develop his use of speech sounds, which relies on him using his speech sound targets in multiple situations to get them to ‘stick’ better (aka generalisation).
One of the ways you can help boost your child’s confidence is by creating their own personal dictionary.
- Buy a groovy looking journal or notebook. Make sure that it’s not too big or heavy for your child to carry and use, but also not too small so that you can’t put too many words in it. Exercise books are great.
- Think carefully about your child’s speech. What words can they say clearly, correctly and consistently across different situations?
- Find pictures to represent these words – hopefully there’s some happy lovely ones in there like Mum, Dad and the dog’s name!
- Stick one picture on each page.
- Write the word next to the picture. Maybe even add a short sentence in there that your child likes to share (eg. Dad goes for the West Coast Eagles, Mum loves chocolate).
- Once you have a few pictures in there, show it to your child. Explain that this is their special book, full of the words that they say so well. It is a celebration of their strengths and what they CAN do, rather than focusing on what they CAN’T do. Cue lots of yays and cheering!
- Over the next few days and weeks, add a picture each day to represent one of your child’s really fabulous words. Celebrate their achievements!
- Encourage your child to take it with them to show off to Nana, Uncle Joe, their carers, their teacher, their therapist, the friendly lady at the supermarket, etc. Let them start to use it independently to help structure their conversations, show off their drawings and provide a support for those people who might not always understand your child’s talking.
- Take a step back and watch your child’s confidence grow as he has a PHYSICAL representation of the wonderful things that he can do! Stick with it and watch him outgrow the dictionary as his speech and communication skills develop and flourish!
Have fun!
Emily
*I’ve used ‘he’ here, as in my experience, it’s more likely to be a boy than a girl. And it makes it easier to read than he/she/they/your child!
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Posted in Books, Conversation Skills, Speech | Tagged speech sound development, speech sound difficulties, speech sound problems, speech sound support |
