Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the teachers from the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning are sharing at-home activities to help you with ideas on how to best support your child’s development.
GENERATING NEW RHYMES FOR SONGS THAT WE KNOW & ILLUSTRATING A SONG BOOK
Materials:
- audio of the song, “Down by the Bay”
- paper
- writing utensils
Directions: Listen to “Down by the Bay” or another rhyming song (find them on YouTube, Spotify, or your channel of choice). Have your child listen for the rhyming words in the song, and you can help your child create a list of rhyming pairs to generate new lyrics from the list! You can then have them illustrate the actions in the lyrics (everything from ducks driving trucks to mice playing in a house), which will result in a song book that can continue to be added to and revisited.
If your child is struggling to hear the rhyme, it is helpful to remind them that rhyming words are words that sound the same at the end. You can offer pairs of words that may rhyme and ask them, “do goose and moose sound the same at the end? Or do goose and dog sound the same?”
PAIRING FOOD WORDS THAT ALLITERATE
Materials:
- pictures of food (cookbooks, grocery store ads, recipes)
Directions: This can be executed as a simple matching activity, a search of the environment, or this activity can target additional skills, such as fine motor if you would prefer to cut out grocery store ads and create alliteration collages. Select a beginning sound (your child’s beginning name sound is always a great starting point) and search for foods that begin with the same sound.
Tip: When focusing on beginning sound, we challenge preschoolers to focus on the sound rather than the actual letter. Phonological awareness is centered around the ability to hear and manipulate sounds, and no text is needed to support this early literacy skill.
FOCUSING ON THE FIRST LETTER IN WORDS WHILE READING IN THE SMALL, SMALL POND
Directions: If you have this book at home, you can read along with this video reading of In The Small, Small Pond.
SEGMENTING AND GENERATING COMPOUND WORDS
Materials:
- compound word pictures below
Directions: Children can sort, match and make up new compound words. For added challenge, have the compound words, but remove the beginning or ending of the word. For example, “now say backpack, but don’t say back;” “now say sunshine but take away the “ssss”. Word play is a fun and engaging way to target phonological awareness.
