Reading Standards: Foundational Skills – Phonological Awareness #2. Recognize and Produce Rhyming Words/Mathematics Measurement & Data #3 – Classify Objects and Count the Number of Objects in Each Category.

Reading Standards: Foundational Skills – Phonological Awareness #2. Recognize and produce rhyming words.

 

Mathematics Measurement & Data #3 – Classify objects and count the number of objects in each category.

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Thanks to Dr. Linda Clinard of UC Irvine and ThinkTogether Early Literacy Program in Orange County, CA for these teaching ideas from her book, Family Time Reading Fun: Help Children Become Successful.

 

“Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” – Blending Sounds to Form Words

Prepare word lists for your use related to areas of interest for young children, such as farm or ocean animals, gardening tools, sports equipment, vehicles, clothing, or classroom supplies. If the word list is about baseball, the words you choose could be bat, fun, champ, runner. Tagboard cards can be illustrated for each topic to assist Dual Language Learners to become aware of new vocabulary (with baseball pictures, for example).

Ask a child to choose a category or area of interest from the lists you created.

Do not show the word lists to the child.

Say each word one sound at a time or one syllable at a time.

Ask your child to guess the word you are “breaking up.” For example, you say the three sounds for bat (/b/a/t/), and then have the child guess bat. (Note: the “slashes” around letters prompt us to smoothly blend and say the sounds represented by the letter(s) and not the name of the letters.)

Variation – After the child is familiar with the game, ask the child to think of words in the category and try to break up the words for you to guess. Another variation is to choose a Mystery Category—after “breaking up” the words, ask the child to guess the Mystery Category.

Talk about the words in the category and count the number of words on the Word List for that category.

 

“Silly Sounds” – Substituting Sounds in Words

Read to a group of children a variety of funny rhymes and poems with rhyming words such as those by Jack Prelustsky (The New Kid on the Block), Shel Silverstein (Falling Up and Where the Sidewalk Ends), or Jan Slepian & Ann Seidler (The Hungry Thing).

Choose several words to “get silly with.”

Have the children get silly with the words by adding new beginning sounds (single phonemes or blends) to make real or nonsense words such as house, louse, pouse, shouse, fouse, and mouse.

Invite children to make up new words for each word you chose from the rhyme.

With The Hungry Thing, children cut food pictures from magazines to “feed” the Hungry Thing (Paint a monster on a box with a large opening for the mouth.). Each child shows classmates the food picture and makes up a real or silly word to rhyme with it, as she/he “feeds” the monster (for example, with a picture of cake, the child might say “I’m feeding the monster a pake.” or rake). As a variation, the child might keep the picture a secret and say the rhyming word. Classmates try to guess the food the child will feed the monster.

 

Family Time Reading Fun is a resource for teachers, tutors, and parents. Dr. Clinard has graciously provided a link to preschool Desired Results Developmental Profiles and State Academic Standards. Another link provides a Spanish translation of 10 Keys to Literacy and about 30 of the strategies from the book in Spanish with the DRDP 2010 and K-4 standards in English & Spanish.. Her book may be ordered from www.kendallhunt.com/clinard. When 10 or more books are purchased at once, it may still give a 10% discount.