If children know and can say 8 rhymes by the age of 4; these children will be in the top 10th percentile by age 8 in reading (grade 2). Therefore, it is important to teach your child at least 8 rhymes. Rhymes can be said or sung. Nursery rhymes are an ideal way for your child to hear the smaller sound units within words. Many nursery rhymes can be set to music, using different notes for each syllable. Sing them slow, sing them fast and be sure to clap out the syllables to help your toddler break down the words in a fun way. Pat-a-cake, Eensy Weensy Spider and Little Miss Muffet are all great examples of this.

Phonemic Awareness
Babies are quite skilled at detecting differences in sounds. This is why children are really good at learning multiple languages in the early years. Babies become aware of phonemes and learn to differentiate the sounds that make up speech through interactions with parents and caregivers. Help your baby develop phonemic awareness by talking and reading to your child every day. Encourage your baby to babble because this is the start of phonemic awareness.

Phonological awareness involves an appreciation of sounds as well as the meaning of spoken words. It is the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of language. Children demonstrate phonological awareness by rhyming words, segmenting a word into syllables and smaller parts and then putting the word back together, noticing that some words have the same beginnings and endings.

Phonological awareness works along with Phonological Sensitivity. This is an understanding that words are made up of smaller sounds and that letters in written language correspond to smaller abstract speech sounds called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest functional unit of sound. For example the word “cat” has 3 distinctly different sounds or phonemes.

Literacy Activity

• Review “Ways to Inexpensive Literacy Play.” (from parent book)
• Have parents create a new literacy activity and share with the other parents
  OR
• Have parents make a list of fingerplays rhymes etc… and share