Let's move on to the next skill your child needs to improve their phonological awareness proficiency.

Children become excited about reading when they begin to use the letter-sounds they know to read words. An important part of reading words is learning to blend the sounds to make a word.

Blending involves having your child listen to syllables or individual sounds in a word and putting them together to identify the word. Children also identify how many syllables or sounds they hear in a word. For example: “dog” has one syllable. “Tiger” has two syllables. (ti-ger)  “Hat” has three sounds - /h/ /a/ /t/ (The slash marks represent the sound, not the name of the letter.)

Try these activities with your child. Clap as you say the word to figure out how many syllables. Dog – “Let’s clap dog.” (Say and clap “dog”) “How many parts?” (one)

Tiger – “Let’s clap tiger” (Say and clap “ti-ger”) “How many parts?”(two)           

Continue on with three and four syllable words. Use familiar words, such as friends names.  Say and count the names of the classmates names.  /Su/…./san/ (Susan).   

Next, blend individual sounds to form a word. Ask child, "What word is /b//i//g/?" (big)  Say each sound in the word. Have your child clap each sound in a word. Hold up one finger for each sound: /d/ /o/ /g/, then "say it fast" - dog.

Listen to this song by Hap Palmer