Syllable Practice: Phonological Awareness Friday

Welcome to Phonological Awareness Friday. Helping a child hear syllables in words is part of phonological awareness. Being able to hear syllables in words will help children read and spell words with more than one syllable. You can practice clapping syllables in words anytime with a child to improve a child's ability to hear separate syllables.

Here are some online games and resources to practice syllables:

Identifying Syllables Game
Syllable Skycoaster Game

Syllabication Rules
Instructional Activities to Develop Phonological Awareness

Don't miss this post from Teach Mama. She shows how she practices syllables with her kids and explains why she thinks phonological awareness is important.

Syllable Practice: Phonological Awareness Friday

Teaching Short Vowel Sounds with Video Demonstrations

Short vowel sounds are often very hard for children to learn. It is easy to confuse one sound with another. You'll find three ways I teach children to hear and say short vowel sounds with video examples in this post.

1. One way for a child to hear the difference between short vowel sounds is to replace short vowel sounds for a vowel sound in a child's name. Here's a video showing how this is done.


2. Sometimes I play a game with hearing and saying short vowel sounds.


3. I like to show a child how changing a vowel sound can change a three letter word into a completely new word.



You can find the magnetic letters and magnetic white board from these videos at my Amazon Store. I make a small percentage from any purchase you make at Amazon from my site.

Teaching Short Vowel Sounds with Video Demonstrations

Books With Rhyme: Phonological Awareness Friday

Welcome to Phonological Awareness Friday. The ability to hear and make rhymes is an important pre-reading skill.

Listening to books with rhyme early and often will develop a child's sense of rhyme. Here are a few of my family's favorite rhyming books.

Barnyard Dance
Commotion in the Ocean
Counting Crocodiles
Dazzling Diggers
Do Pirates Take Baths?
Goodnight Moon
Hop on Pop
If I Ran the Zoo
Is Your Mama a Llama?
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?
Pigs APlenty, Pigs Galore
Rumble in the Jungle
Sheep in a Jeep
Sheep on a Ship
Sheep in a Shop
Some Dogs Do
There's a Wocket in My Pocket

Try pausing before reading a rhyming word and see if your child can say the rhyming word after a story has been read a few times. Children usually love rhyming books and want them read again and again.

Books With Rhyme: Phonological Awareness Friday

Find a Good Book to Read Outloud and Make It a Book Night!

My family loves movie night. We snuggle up, eat popcorn, drink pop, and watch a movie together. The other day I suggested we make it a book night instead of a movie night. We made popcorn, put pop in our special cups with lids, and sat in the livingroom with the TV off. My kids wanted me to make a fire too. Their dad was out of town, and I was too tired. I do think a fire would've been great, maybe next time.

We read Mick Hart Was Here by Barbara Park. It's a book I've been wanting to read to my kids. Their grandpa drowned a little over a year ago. My kids were very close to their grandpa and have been doing an amazing job dealing with their grief. The main character in the book deals with the death of her brother to a bicycle accident. It's a well done book with humor and a fulfilling resolution.

There are so many good books to read outloud. My kids mostly like realistic fiction with some humor. Here are a few of my family's favorites in no particular order.
A Week In the Woods
Dear Max
Roxy and The Hooligans
Socks

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Share in a comment some favorite books you have read outloud.

Find a Good Book to Read Outloud and Make It a Book Night!

Syllables in Words - Phonological Awareness Friday

Welcome to Phonological Awareness Friday. This post will focus on the basic skill of hearing syllables in words. Hearing syllables is part of a larger skill set called phonological awareness.

Syllables in Songs, Poems, and Stories:
Syllables are the beat of words. You can show your child the beat of words by clapping syllables in songs, poems, and favorite books you read to your child. You don't always have to clap. Be creative. You can use a musical instrument, nod your head, tap your fingers, or stomp your feet. Your child will eventually join you and do it on his or her own in time.

Syllables in the World:
You can practice hearing syllables anytime with your child. Sneak in clapping, tapping, nodding or stomping syllables in words at different times of the day until you know your child understands syllables. You can practice syllables of family names, objects in the room, names of stores, or places you've visited. 


Try this free online syllable game.
Check out this resource for simple phonological activities to try at home.
Listen to 70 free children songs and nursery rhymes to music. (I don't suggest clapping to the syllables with the background music.)

Syllables in Words - Phonological Awareness Friday

Phonological Awareness Is an Often Overlooked Reading Skill

Phonological Awareness is the ability to hear, say, and manipulate the sounds in language. I plan to create user friendly posts every Friday to help readers of this blog understand phonological awareness, assess a child's abilities, and find ways to teach phonological awareness. LD Online has a must read article I encourage you to check out. Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines 

Most of my research outlines the skills of phonological awareness as: rhyming songs, sentence segmentation, syllable segmentation and blending, onset-rime blending and segmentation, and blending and segmenting individual phonemes. The skills are listed in order of easy to more difficult.

This video I found on YouTube may help you make more sense of phonological awareness.


Teachers, homeschoolers, and parents may find these printable activities helpful.

If you are wanting to get started teaching phonological awareness right away, try reading nursery rhymes and other books with rhyme.

Try these fun online reading games to practice phonological awareness with a child:
Blending Bowl
Sassy Seals
Pumpkin Patch

Be sure to check out this resource page to get a full picture of phonological awareness.

Use the label, phonological awareness, in the side column for more posts. Consider subscribing to this blog via email, so you don't miss a post.

Find a few books to help teach phonological awareness here.

Phonological Awareness Is an Often Overlooked Reading Skill

Free Phonics Reading Programs

Research has shown that most children need some type of systematic phonics instruction. There are some really good phonics books available today. I recommend combining phonics books with easy reader books for children learning to read.

Progressive Phonics - This site requires registration, but it's free. I registered and have not received any unwanted emails.

Starfall - You'll love this site! Be sure move your curser around the Learn to Read stories for fun animations.

Free Reading - Read a review of the program here.

Free Phonics Reading Programs

October 2010 Chapter Book Read Aloud Challenge

Welcome to the first monthly chapter book read aloud challenge. You'll find a description of the challenge here.

I'm reading The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco by Janice Repka this month. The main character is an eleven year old boy who has been raised in a circus with his parents. He moves in with his aunt and uncle to live the life of a "regular" kid. My goal is to have lots of sharing of our thinking during reading this book with my three children ages 7, 7, and 9. You'll find resources to help create sharing in the description of this challenge.

Please join me and add the title of the book you'll be reading this month in a comment. Look for highlights from our experience with our book in a post on October 31st.

October 2010 Chapter Book Read Aloud Challenge