Because we already know how to read and most of us don’t really remember much about how we got here, we often don’t realize that preschool age children tend to hear words as a single sound. Not consciously realizing that words can be comprised of beginning, middle and end sounds.Being able to distinguish different sounds within a word is the basis of the phonics approach to teaching reading.Being able to distinguish different sounds within a word is the basis of the phonics approach to teaching reading. Children who have no experience with rhyming and letter-sound correspondence before kindergarten are slower to learn to read in first grade.
Rhyming teaches children to hear ending sounds in words, which can easily be done by exposure to common nursery rhymes, e.g. ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’. Many children’s books, such as ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See’ and ‘Goodnight Moon’ incorporate this skill as well. Once they catch on to distinguishing the ending sounds, it doesn’t go away.
The following activity teaches children to recognize similarities in ending sounds. There are 16 sets of 3 pictures of objects. For each set, say aloud the three objects and then ask your child to point to the picture of each when you say it aloud a second time.
The first set is a ‘bear’, a ‘pear’ and a ‘sock’. Ask them to point to (or circle if you have printed the pages) the two pictures that sound alike.
You can also ask if they know another word that sounds similar (e.g, they might say ‘tear’, but might also say ‘clock’ if they are aware of the one that doesn’t rhyme with the other two). Asking them to point to or circle the two pictures that rhyme reinforces what they have learned because they will be rehearsing it as they do it.
Looking for ways to help your child become a strong confident reader? Teaching sight words is a great step on that path. Recognizing words by sight, without having to sound them out, allows children to be faster more fluent readers.
Children with large sightword vocabularies become strong confident readers
Sight words are words that are commonly used and recognized without sounding them out. Being able to recognize these words quickly and accurately allows children to read with more speed and accuracy. This helps build their confidence as they can recognize words quickly, and move on to more complex words and phrases. It also helps them comprehend what they are reading, as they can focus on the meaning of sentences rather than sounding out each word. Having a strong foundation of sight words is essential for children to become strong, confident readers.
Here are 10 simple and easy things to do to teach children sightwords:
Teaching sightwords while you read is an easy way to help your child become a confident reader.
1. Read stories and books that focus on sight words. Point to the words and pictures and have your child say the word with you. As your child becomes more familiar with the words make it a race to see who can say the word first. Find other places where the words are written and point them out–signs, posters billboards, etc. familiar have your child say the word with you
2. Use flashcards to practice sight words.
3. Create fun worksheets using sight words.
4. Play games with sight words, such as Bingo or Matching. 5
. Have children color sightword images and trace the word.
6. Use magnetic letters to help children learn sight words.
7. Sing songs that use sight words.
8. Incorporate sight words into everyday activities.
9. Have children trace sight words with their finger.
10. Break longer words into smaller chunks to help children learn them.
Learning sightwords helps children to quickly recognize common words in text. Knowing these words helps children to read more fluently, as they are more likely to recognize the words when they see them. When children are able to recognize sightwords quickly and accurately, it allows them to focus more on the context of the text, which helps them to understand what they are reading. This in turn leads to improved reading comprehension and strong confident readers.
Phonetic awareness is one of the most important building blocks of literacy learning, and rhyming is a fun and easy way to introduce and practice rhyming skills. Research has shown that rhyming is a good predictor of later reading achievement (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008) as well as a host of other cognitive boosting benefits.
Rhyming is a good predictor of later reading competence
Rhyming focuses attention onto specific sounds within words—isolating the phonemes and syllables—and then comparing those to other words. Nursery rhymes and rhyming games are a fun and natural way to help children develop the skills to isolate and compare specific sounds within words. In addition, rhyming has been shown to help children learn repetition and rhythm, boost verbal skills, increase vocabulary, and even improve recall and memory.
Three Stages of Rhyming
There are three basic stages of rhyming–exposure, recognition, and production. It can take a while for rhyming to click, so the more that you can expose and call attention to rhyming words the easier it will be for children to progress into the next stages of rhyme learning. As their rhyming ability progresses, creating opportunities to flex this new found skill will boost phonetic abilities and prepare them to become proficient readers.
Books are an Easy Place to Start
Use Rhyming books to increase phonics learning and literacy.
There is a plethora of rhyming books to choose from! Pick a few that you feel will be age and interest reflective of your child and incorporate them into your daily reading routine.
As you read, point out the words that rhyme, “Cat and Hat rhyme, they sound the same at the end, let’s say them together, cAT, hAT.” Have your child point to the pictures of the rhyming words. This article has more suggestions on how to optimize reading with your child. This is all part of stage one, as the books and rhymes becomes more familiar, you can help your child work on stage 2 by letting them fill in and say the rhyming words on their own. Let it be a fun interactive part of reading.
Nursery Rhymes Provide Additional Benefits
Nursery Rhymes boost phonics and other language skills
Nursery Rhymes are great options for rhyming books, they tend to use a cadence and words that are less common in our modern language, which is great for expanding vocabularies and literacy exposure. Nursery rhymes also can contain humor, emotions, and examples of social behavior that can be a great scaffold for children to gain these skills for themselves. As your child progresses through stages one and two, continue to point out and emphasize rhyming words.
Use Music for Rhyming Exposure and Practice
Singing can be a great way to develop Rhyming awareness
Anywhere you can sing, you can work on rhyming skills. Singing is just rhyming set to music, and you can boost the phonetic value of singing by pointing out or emphasizing the rhyming words in a song. As rhyming awareness grows let them fill in and sing the rhyming words. Combining multiple senses in learning is always beneficial, so if there are hand actions or silly voices for the rhyming words all the better.
Rhyming Practice can be Done Anywhere
Another game that helps a child advance through recognition (stage 2) into production (stage 3) is having them identify words that don’t rhyme within a set of rhyming words. Say three words, two of which rhyme, then ask them which one doesn’t work. As they get better at this game you can increase the number of words and use longer, multiple syllable words.
As your child enters the third stage of rhyming production, you can create rhyming riffs on games like Name as Many as You Can and I Spy. Have one person name an item and let the other come up with as many rhyming words as they can, then switch. You can have speed rounds, timed rounds, anything to spark their interest. “I spy with my little eye, three things that rhyme with ___.” All the better if a child can outsmart the grown ups and find more items than you.
Be creative and make up your own games that present fun challenges and can be done just about anywhere—car rides, waiting rooms, public transportation, prepping dinner, etc.
Rhyming games are a fun way to increase phonics skills
Rhyming Board Games
For the kids that love playing board games, there are a number of options. Some of our favorites are Rhyming Bingo and Rhyming dominos. There are also fun Rhyming puzzles.
Young children love repetition! Prepare to read their favorite books over, and over, and over again. Though you may find this boring, The child’s brain is finding something new and learning with each repetition. Think of all the things a child’s brain is tasked with learning at this age, each repetition helps them through organization, categorizing, pattern matching, attaching words with objects, etc., etc., ect… Even though you may feel it’s a bit of a snooze fest, let your child choose the book and drive the number and frequency of repetitions as soon as they are able.
Reading to children regularly is a great way to increase their literacy learning
Case Study with Good Night Moon
Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is the most popular bedtime children’s bedtime story of all time. The story is deceptively simple and parents may not realize that it is designed to link abstract words with the child’s everyday experience. Children often love hearing the story at bedtime, night after night. They don’t know they are learning that words have different beginning and end sounds (rhyming; mittens and kittens) or consciously consider that words are symbolic representations of things they already know: objects (moon, cow, etc), object characteristics (green, red), object spatial relations (over, on), or object actions actions (jumping, whispering). They just know that it’s familiar and find the repetition soothing.
The illustrations in the book follow the text on each page so parents can help children make the association between the word ‘cow’ or ‘moon’ with the picture of the cow or moon, or the cow jumping over moon, the red balloon and the bears sitting on the chair. Repetition within the story and reading it frequently before bedtime work together to unconsciously teach the brain to link words to experience. No formal teaching lecture/degree required!
Reading together can help to enhance children’s literacy learning.
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of—
The cow jumping over the moon
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs
And two little kittens
And a pair of mittens
And a little toy house
And a young mouse
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
And a quiet old lady who was whispering “hush”
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Goodnight cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush”
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Good night noises everywhere
Finally, its worth a reminder that this practical example of how parents can help children acquire preliteracy skills such as rhyming and sight words relies on the importance the parent places on the practice and the enjoyment it has for the child. This is why parents make such good teachers of these types of skills.
