Silly Sounds: Exploring Phonological Awareness 

Before children can learn to read words on a page, they need to be able to play with the sounds in words. This is called phonological awareness. Children with phonological awareness can do things like identify sounds in words, count syllables in words and identify words that rhyme.

Since phonological awareness is all about hearing sounds in words, you don't need any books or special materials practice these skills. You can practice them anywhere!

There are lots of fun ways to explore these skills with your child, like singing, sharing books and playing games. Here are four fun and easy ways to support phonological awareness: 

• Rhyming: Try a guessing game, such as “I am thinking of an animal that rhymes with big” 
• Count Syllables: Clap out and count the syllables in the names of people in your family. Clapping helps children identify syllables within a word. 
• Find Beginning Sounds: Choose a sound, such as /t/ and find objects at the grocery store that start with that sound. 
• Blending sounds together: Say the sounds in a word really slowly, like sssnnnaaappp, and then ask your child to guess the word. They can try this, too! 
• Play I Spy using sounds: Say, "I spy something red that starts with the /s/ sound" and see if your child can find it,

If you're looking for some books to help practice phonological awareness, we love these books!

Being able to rhyme words and think of rhymes is an important skill! In The Book That Almost Rhymed, an older brother tries to tell the story of a rhyming adventure, but his interrupting little sister has other ideas. As you read this book, have your child finish the messed-up rhyme with the right word.

Another fun way to rhyme is by singing, and bedtime is a great time to sing! In Hip Hop Lollipop, follow a girl named Lollipop as she dances down the hall and bounces off the tall wall on her way to sleep.

Reading books with alliteration (words starting with the same sound) is a great way to play with the starting sounds of words. Click, Clack, Quackity-quack is an alphabetical adventure full of alliteration! After you finish reading, have your child think of words that start with the same sound as their name.

You can also practice alliteration be saying the tongue twisters in Six Sheep Sip Thick Shakes out loud. Can you come up with your own tongue twisters to try?

Being able to understand that words are made up of individual sounds (syllables) is another important skill. The Word Collector is about the joy of collecting all kinds of one-syllable, two-syllable and multi-syllable words!  After you read it, see if you can find the number of syllables in your name and collect words with that number of syllables!

Another good skill to practice is changing the sounds in words to make new words. Runny Babbit is a very silly book (or "billy sook!") where the first letters in words are swapped to make new words. Can your child flip the first letters back to make the correct words?