Voice Sound Cards Sparklebox
Main purpose: To distinguish between the differences in vocal sounds, including oral blending and segmenting
Explore different mouth movements with children – blowing, sucking, tongue stretching and wiggling. Practising these movements regularly to music can be fun and helps children with their articulation.
Show children how they can make sounds with their voices, for example:
Make your voice go down a slide – wheee!
Make your voice bounce like a ball – boing, boing
Sound really disappointed – oh
Hiss like a snake – ssssss
Keep everyone quiet – shshshsh
Gently moo like a cow – mmmoooo
Look astonished – oooooo!
Be a steam train – chchchchch
Buzz like a bumble bee – zzzzzzz
Be a clock – tick tock.
This can be extended by joining single speech sounds into pairs (e.g. ee-aw like a donkey).
Make amplifiers (trumpet shapes) from simple cones of paper or lightweight card and experiment by making different noises through the cones.
Model sounds for the children:
the up and down wail of a siren,
the honk of a fog horn,
a peep, peep, peep of a bird.
Contrast loud and soft sounds. Invite the children to share their favourite sound for the rest of the group to copy. Use the trumpets to sound out phonemes that begin each child’s name.
Encourage a small group of children to sit in a circle or facing the front so they can see you and Metal Mike (a toy robot computer). Have ready a bag of pictures of objects (e.g. cat, dog, mug, sock) and sound out and blend the phonemes in their names. Ask each child in turn to take out a picture or an object from a bag. Hold it up and tell the group that Metal Mike is a computer and so he talks with a robot voice. Ask the children to name the object as Metal Mike would and demonstrate it for them in a robotic voice (e.g. ‘c-a-t’). Feed the object or picture into Metal Mike and encourage the group first to listen to you and then join in as you say the word exaggerating the sound of each phoneme, followed by blending the phonemes to make the word.
Look, listen and note how well children:
distinguish between the differences in vocal sounds.
Main purpose: To explore speech sounds
Working with a small group of children, an adult makes a long sound with their voice, varying the pitch (e.g. eeeeeee). The next person repeats the sound and continues as the next joins in, to form a chain. The sound gets passed as far round the circle as possible. Start again when the chain is broken.
Give each child a target sound to put into a story when they hear a particular word or character (e.g. make a ‘ch’ sound when they hear the word ‘train’).
Start with a single sound that the small group of children can make together when they hear a target word. Be prepared to prompt initially and leave pauses in your reading to make it obvious where the sounds are required.
Record some children talking while they are busy with a freely chosen activity and play the
recording to a larger group. Can the children identify each other’s voices? Create a ‘talking
book’ for the group or class with photographs of each child and help them to record their own voice message – My name is…, I like singing, etc.
Record the children using their voices to make suitable sounds for simple pictures (e.g. of
animals, a steam train, a doorbell, a clock). Ask them to listen to the recording later and match each sound to a picture.
Look, listen and note how well children:
sustain their listening throughout a story;
listen for a target word or character and respond with an appropriate associated speech sound;
remember the sound sequence and produce it when required;
recognise their own and each other’s voices, including a recorded voice.
Main purpose: To talk about the different sounds that we can make with our voices
After making a sound with your voice, talk about the features of the sound with the children was it a long sound, a loud sound, did it change from high to low, etc.? Introduce vocabulary gradually with examples and visual cues (e.g. symbols and pictures) to help the children who have difficulty understanding. Then introduce new vocabulary to the children to help them describe the sound (e.g. to talk about high and low pitch).
Discuss with the children how they can use their voices to add sounds to stories such as Bear Hunt, Chicken Licken or The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Repeat favourite rhymes and poems in different voices together (e.g. whispering, growling, shouting, squeaking) and discuss the differences.
Provide small mirrors for the children to observe their faces, lips, teeth and tongue as they make different speech sounds and experiment with their voices. Provide home-made megaphones in the outside area so the children can experiment with
different speech sounds and their volume.
Provide simple animal masks, and tails if possible, to encourage the children to dramatise animal movements and sounds.
Provide a wide selection of rhymes and songs on CD or tape so that the children can choose to listen to and join in with their favourites, and can extend their repertoire.
Look, listen and note how well children:
use appropriate vocabulary to talk about different voice and speech sounds.
Changes in voice and exaggerated facial expressions help to support listening and attention by building interest and anticipation. For some children, these clues are also vital to supporting their understanding of the story.
Tuning in to what the child is doing and joining in with them tells the child you are listening to them.
Children in the early stages of learning EAL may need time to observe others and rehearse the spoken challenge; as in any turn-taking activities they should not be asked to take the first turn.
For extension, linguistic diversity and fun, where parents and carers speak languages other than English, find out how they represent, for example, animal noises. Are woof, meow and quack universal? Which examples from other languages are the most like the real sounds?