Activities To Try at Home

Phonological Awareness Activities:

Phonological Awareness activities are those that help children hear, recognize, and manipulate the sounds in spoken language. These skills include a child's ability to:

• Identify words that rhyme

• Count the number of syllables in a word

• Recognize alliterations (words that have the same beginning sound, e.g. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)

• Segment (break) a sentence into words

• Phonemic Awareness (blend individual sounds to make words, strech out words into individual sounds, and swap the sounds in words to make a new word)

Rhyming: 

Try playing the following game with your child to help promote understanding of rhyming word.

"I am thinking of an animal that rhymes with big.  What is the the animal?" 

Answer: pig

What are some other words that rhyme with big? (dig, wig, fig)

The following are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child.

Recognizing Syllables in Words:

While at the grocery store, have your child tell you the syllables in different food names.  Have them hold up a finger for each word part. e.g. Pineapple - Pine-ap-ple, Pineapple has 3 syllables

The following are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child.

Alliteration:

Alliteration, where the sound you aare focused on is repeated over and over again, can be a fun way to provide practice with a specific speech sound.  Try practicing these with your child:

• For /m/: Miss Mary makes marvelous meatballs!

• For /s/: Silly Sam sings songs about socks and shoes.

• For /f/: Francis finds fireflies with a friend.

The following are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child.

Phonemic Awareness:

Phonemic Awareness encompasses many skills. By the end of  Kindergarten, students should be able to recognize the individual sounds of each phoneme, blend them to make words, and manipulate the sounds of words to form new words.  The following are some suggested activities that you can do with your child at home to promote growth in phonemic awareness:

• "I Spy" beginning sound game: Play a game of "I Spy" at home, on a walk, or at the grocery store.  Choose words with easy-to-hear beginning sounds.  For example, you might say, "I spy something yellow that starts with the /b/ sound (banana)."

• Sound Scavenger Hunt: Chose a letter sound and then have your child find things around the house that starts with the same sound.  For example, "Can you find something in our house that starts with the /d/ sound?" door, desk, dog

• "I Spy" Blending: While taking a walk or at home, play "I Spy" using the sounds of words that you might see.  For example, you may say "I spy a /d/ /o/ /g/. Can you help me figure out what it is?" Your child will blend the sounds to make the word dog.

• Sound Counting: Using Lego bricks, blocks, beads, pennies, or scraps of paper, say a word and have your child show you how many sounds the word makes.  They will move one item for every sound they make.  For example, say bat. Bat has three sounds /b/-/a/-/t/. You child would use three items to represent these sounds. Have then tap each object as they say a sound.  Remember, your child is only counting the sounds, not the letters in a word.  For example, the word bike only has three sounds because the i_e combo makes 1 sounds (long e).

The following are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child.

Phonics Activities:

Phonics is the ability to match the phoneme to the corresponding grapheme, or sound to letter.  Your Kindergarten teacher will teach these letters and sounds out of alphabetical order. But don't worry, that is how it is meant to be taught!

The following are a few things that you can do at home to support your child's learning of their phonemes and graphemes:

• While reading to your child, point out letters and practice making their sounds.

• Make an alphabet book using old magazines or catalogs.  Have your child write the letter at the top of the page and then find pictures that start with the same initial sounds.

• Write letters on pieces of paper and put them in a paper bag. Have your child reach in and grab a letter.  Then have them say the sound that matches that letter.  Remember: consonants are easier for Kindergarten students than vowels! Kindergartens will also only focus on short vowels!

More Letter Recognition Activities (from the Florida Center for Reading Research)

More Sound Recognition Activities (from the Florida Center for Reading Research)

Vocabulary Activities:

Children with larger vocabularies understand more of what they read and hear.  You can help your child develop a greater vocabulary by reading with them at home.  Here are a few other ideas of ways you can help your child develop a larger vocabulary:

• Word Collecting - Have your child(ren) collect interesting words that they have heard throughout the day.  At the dinner table, have everyone share their words and what they think they mean.  If your child shares an incorrect meaning, guide him/her to the correct meaning. Then try to use some of these interesting words in upcoming conversations with your child.

• Use the language of books such as title, author, illustrator, page number, etc. when reading with your child.

The following are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child.

"My Child Can" Booklet from ALSDE

The Alabama Department of Education has released a series of "My Child Can" booklets for each grade level. Inside each booklet, you can find an overview of skills that your child should master by the end of the year.  Included within are also several activities and resources for you to use with your child at home.